He is missing the point. When leaders site the effort and mobilization that went into fighting and winning world war they are not making a comparison based on the literal nature of the enemy or threat, they are speaking about the collective spirit and sense of urgency that was present and required to win those battles. The same urgency and spirit are required now in the face of this major threat. It doesn’t matter if there is ever a ‘clear winner’, any strides we make as a national and global body will make a difference. And so what does it take to get an all out effort? It takes a focus on the threat similar to the focus we had under the darkness of nazism.
7
I thought this article was strange. It isn't a war on climate change as no one seems to be fighting it but a few members of the resistance. I would call it rot from within and not just in the USA. The people that could do something about it won't until they have squeezed every last penny of profit from Mother Earth, but by then she will be dead and all of us along with her.
3
In response to assertions that the climate crisis warrants a mobilization on a _scale_ not seen since World War II, the author argues that mobilization of a _quality_ not seen since World War II is a completely inappropriate strategy.
"I really don't think interring the Japanese is a good idea," says the author, "and besides, AOC, towards who exactly are you claiming we should ignite our hatred? I'm afraid I just don't see how tanks and mortar fire are going to solve this one."
I'm not sure how this was published in The Times. Maybe I'm missing something big here, but after a re-read to double-check, I'm no less confused.
2
Wooh! Great article because it rouses the body politic once again. We're almost awake now, many of us.
And the insightful, earnest comments by the NYTimes family: Thanks, guys! I'm learning a lot; you have good ideas and constructive criticism.
This is the America I fought for in Vietnam: an intelligent, concerned, moral group of citizens. Good guys.
We may not defeat climate change, our latest and greatest challenge, but it looks like it won't be from lack of trying by many of us.
Lowering my shields long enough to suggest a solution, I highly recommend science. As just one hopeful sign, I read yesterday that we will largely be relying on solar and wind power by 2040. Perhaps that's untrue; I can't argue for or against it. Or maybe that's too late; I'm not an Earth scientist. I just read stuff.
Consensus by scientists is that we've painted ourselves into a corner. I believe it, but I still drive a car, but as little as possible, run my A/C here in hot, humid Florida, and flush a toilet many times daily, so I'm still contributing to the problem. Many more, I suspect, do likewise.
So even well-intentioned individuals cannot solve the problem, but maybe together -- with science -- we can. We've got everything to lose if we don't do something soon.
Keep hope alive. We're depending on your good will and humane behavior. Do it for the kids.
1
Having served a hellacious tour of duty during the Gulf War, described in his book Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, Roy Scranton developed an appreciation for the uncompromising nature of war. Most of us who did not serve continue to hold on to a fuzzy-headed hope that dealing with the climate crisis will allow us to maintain an orderly, equitable, pathway to a manageable end, but as Scranton sees it, WWII is best viewed as an all-out, compromise-filled battle for survival that in substantial ways was much easier to navigate. In today’s world, the unfathomable resolve made by an elite few of only a fraction of the world’s leaders to fight the Axis powers would be hard to imagine, but even that effort will not be enough to get ‘er done in this time of crisis. Happy narratives may feel good, but I fear Scranton’s dark view is closer to the truth.
1
We passed the "tipping point" in the mid 90s. What the wealthy are up to is gathering enough money so their progeny can live someplace livable in 75 years while the rest of the planet fights for life. Oddly, they don't seem to understand their money will be pretty useless in a dying world; there ya go. Trump and others actually want to hasten this end because the poor and PoC (you know, "takers") will be the first to die.
5
Looking at the letters below, it's amazing to me that a lot of intelligent, thoughtful individuals refuse to describe the most likely reality, one starting to stare us in the face right now: populations that cannot survive in their homes will be on the march. 70 million refugees, according to the UN, are internally displaced right now, or on the road to more prosperous nations. More comfortably situated populations will preen themselves on their generosity as they welcome in people they have no economic need for, until they realize that there's a limit to the tolerance of their own citizens to such suicidal behavior. Borders will be defended. Disease and famine will happen. First world technologically advanced, countries will survive, others will accept reality, and accept charity with conditions attached, or go under. By the way, anybody watching the Gulf Stream as Greenland's fresh water pours into it? I could be wrong about all first world countries surviving.
4
We are not in any sort of climate collapse, the public has been fed the 'we only have (fill in the blank) years to save ourselves' nonsense for decades, yet we still go on. Hysteria about forest fires, rising seas, acidification, etc, etc. are media and 'science' pushed by people who have an interest in there being a crisis, their livelihoods depend on it. The US could stop using fossil fuels today and it would have zero effect as long as China and India keep expanding their use. And you know these 'experts' are not serious when they always say nuclear energy must be shutdown even though that is the ONLY VIABLE source of clean energy that can power modern societies. The solution HAS to include nuclear and lots of it. Until people admit that, it's all nonsense and power grabbing.
@Evitzee So it is NOT a collapse unless the solution fits with YOUR specific preferences? Good to know.
2
Professor Scranton participates in a widely shared but incorrect bias when he writes, "Democrats show a profound lack of unity on whether climate change should come before economic justice, racial justice, revitalizing American democracy, labor rights, immigration reform, health care and gun control." In fact, Democrats increasingly recognize the intersectionality of the climate crisis with all of the other major issues we face. The climate crisis cannot be separated from the injustices of systemic racism and systemic poverty, it is a driving force behind mass immigrations that destabilize governments and give rise to authoritarian leaders, it intersects with the rise of white nationalism and fascism in this country, it increases health risks in too many ways to list. It is as the US Defense Department put it, "a threat multiplier." So climate is not one issue on a list of many separate issues. It is THE issue of our time. Paradoxically, Prof. Scranton seems to recognize this when he concludes, "total mobilization may be our only hope."
4
@Roger Knudson
I agree with much your analysis, and I think Scranton does also. At the same time the actions of the governing body of the Democratic Party suggests they are far behind some of the candidates in their understanding of how climate change encompasses all other issues. I recommend the recent Democracy Now broadcast of an interview with Naomi Klein, who, I suggest, agrees with Scranton's analysis of the Democratic Party, as it is now functioning - as a party.
3
Future energy sources will be more expensive than current fossil fuels. The energy density and ease of transportation of fossil fuels make them ideal and cheap for doing exactly what we are doing to the planet…the bad side effects of climate change are unfortunate and will get worse, but not enough of a “gut punch” to make the world act as needed. Any alternative has severe limits in comparison—too many people just not realizing such.
Foisil fuels are only cheap if the externalities related to their consumption are ignored. That is what the world, and particularly the United States, have been doing for generations. If you add the cost of climate change, atmospheric pollution, health impacts, and excess mortality to the cost of extracting, refining and distributing fossil fuels, they are prohibitively expensive, not cheap.
1
Mobilizing to prevent war by addressing the climate emergency is our last best chance. We can spend hours and weeks discussing the historical parallels that are relevant or not. But the bottom line, which the author points out, is that we must mobilize to save as much life as possible. It will not be easy, smooth, or without risk. However, a unifying message of mobilization, led by the people, can help to guard against disinformation from the monied interests that must be overcome and can help prevent violent outcomes. We need a mobilization vision that includes everyone (except maybe the very few that profit from the status quo) and rejects the greed and corruption that has kept us from working together toward victory.
2
If 'World War II' is the standard being invoked, then the war so far looks like the 'Battle of the Best Barbecue'. It's simple: global warming is a problem for the commons, which the market cannot solve because it cannot see it. Enforce carbon taxes, or a cap-and-trade in carbon credits, and then the market can see the problem and do what it does best. Is there a Political Party, or something, preventing us from setting carbon taxes, or a cap-and-trade system? Then vote them out of office. And that's it. Your Howitzer is right there in your local voting booth. That's the war. That's all of it.
2
Just before I read this article I was on the Fox News site, which I check regularly. Their lead story was about how all the past predictions of climate disaster have been proven false, according to them.
The human race has reached its dead end, as all species do eventually.
4
We have always known how to fight our foes, thanks to our built-in instincts. Climate change falls outside any previous experience, we do not even know how to fight back. Good luck to every one!
2
I'm all for a global mobilization to mitigate the worst effects of climate change (mitigate, because it's way too late to stop it altogether). But even if that never happens, it's some consolation to realize that, in the end, this is a self-correcting problem. The earth will warm and weather patterns will change to the point where human life cannot be sustained except in the most ideal locations, and at a population level much smaller than it is now. By that point we will have burned all the fossil fuels anyway, and any additional greenhouse gases will be the product of natural processes. The "Anthropocene" epoch we have so boldly declared will, after a geologically insignificant one or ten thousand years, come to an abrupt or gradual end. Organisms evolved to survive the new climatic regime will take over, with scarcely a glance over their scaly shoulders at the wreckage of human civilization. All will be well with Mother Earth, even when we're no longer in the cradle.
2
Money drives everything. Until everyone, or at least most of us can make money fighting climate change, we will lose. Ultimately, lose everything.
2
"Climate Change is Not World War"
Maybe not, but it could and probably will cause one.
An actual world war.
And there won't be any non-participating countries.
5
This essay makes little sense. It’s like the author started with one argument, I.e, WW2 is a bad metaphor for fighting climate change, but realized by the end it was not such a bad metaphor after all.
What is the author asking of us? Moderation in our actions to save the planet? I am beginning to hear more conservatives speaking this way. Yes climate change is real, they say, but we have to act moderately. Let’s not do anything extreme. Let’s not cause civil unrest or deny people their god given right to pollute.
At the beginning of the essay, the author seems to be in the process of bargaining: WW2 caused bad things, so let’s not do them again.
But by the essay’s end, he grudgingly acknowledges the truth. What choice do we have?
What is he suggesting then?
3
@Morth
Roy Scranton has written three important books. I recommend them to help put the article in perspective. He is a very important writer and thinker.
1
People don't seem to be focusing upon one evident brake
on this collective suicidal urge. This involves large amounts of
pressure, moral, social, and economic, brought upon
the funders of fossil fuel infrastructure, exploration, and
consumption projects. The banks that fuel the daily operations, the investment banks that invest in the long term infrastructure, the mutual fund companies that invest in the companies are the principal fires under the day to day operations that promote co2 emissions. The same should also be said for the investments in Big Ag or large scale construction/real estate companies.
If these financial companies would reorient their definitions
of profitability, in the same way that insurance companies are
beginning to fret about long term risk, this would be a
fairly important signal to the markets that the rules of the energy usage and carbon emission games are changing. The more the pressure, the faster this occurs.
This would be as useful as a carbon tax to signal to markets that recalculating your costs will be needed to maintain
profitability, so behavior will need to change.
So, how do you convince these very powerful power brokers
to redefine/rethink how they make their profits??
Since we can't do anything with the political class, maybe
the investment class is more open to a collective demand for self survival....
The science is clear that carbon emissions and other industrial activity are causing a warming planet, rising sea levels, more frequent weather extremes, and ocean acidification. But there is no credible scientific evidence that this will result in the "end of civilization." That ridiculous hyperbole give ammunition to the climate deniers.
3
@tanstaafl
I recommend Uninhabitable Earth by Wallace-Wells.
1
@tanstaafl
Well, Houston will be under water, so it will be the end of Houston...and New Orleans, Miami and quite a few other places--Wall street will be Water Wall street.
So, bits of civilization head for hades...depends if there is a tipping point.
2
That's an awful lot of words used to say nothing of real value, and, likely, needlessly complicate the discussion of the Green New Deal, which is simply a sweeping statement of the urgency with which the US must address climate change. Of course, it's not exactly tantamount to going to war, that's just a metaphor for the level of effort the climate crisis demands. Nobody is saying it will be easy or has dismissed the sacrifices and hardships that would likely come with such a large-scale mobilization.
Seriously what was the point of this piece?
4
@Steve
I recommend his books. He is an important writer and thinker.
1
I agree that mobilization in terms of war is probably a bad choice of words but mobilization in terms of the Manhattan Project,or the Marshall Plan, or the Moonshot response to Sputnik is a better descriptor for "mobilization". Clearly, to reorient the World economy away from fossil fuels is a huge dislocation of the existing basis for improvement in the World standard of living and increase in life expectancy.
The mobilization must be an international, cooperative effort to develop new energy sources that will meet the needs of a global population of about 9-10 Billion people by Mid-Century.
We have pursued alternate energy sources for about a half century, since the oil crisis of the 1970s, and believe that we need to develop very cheap electricity to offer the transportation, industrial and home user markets. In "Spaceship Earth" and "Silent Earth" Dr. James Powell and I describe technologies for creating very cheap electricity that we strongly believe should be developed internationally. Briefly, we describe a Maglev Launch System for placing solar generating power satellites in geosynchronous orbit to beam energy to receiving fields on Earth. This system would provide power at about 2 cents per kwhr to grids and large industrial users. With cheap electricity it would be possible to create jet fuel from air and water, capture and sequester CO2 from the atmosphere and desalinate water for human and agriculture use. We also need to develop more efficient PV material.
2
So appreciate an analysis that actually delves into both the catastrophic effects of climate change AND the lesser-but-catastrophic effects of mounting a WWII-style mobilization against it. It's so tiring and frustrating to see arguments coming from all quarters about climate change that ignore or downplay the inevitable catastrophe we're facing and pretend there's some way forward, either by denying the problem altogether or by recycling a bunch and simply making fat cats make a few changes to their businesses. It's the kind of discussion Americans need to have but can't stand having: one that realistically points out that there's no way forward in the climate change discussion that can honestly bypass some form of unspeakable havoc.
1
Climate change will have far worse consequences for humanity than any war, and steps to ameliorate it pose a far greater challenge, since all of humanity must be mobilized to combat something that doesn't obviously and immediately pose a threat, and where the enemy is ourselves.
4
What would it really take for the US to really go after fossil fuel elimination and agricultural changes to address climate change? It would take America to once again become a truly great country. Not a super rich Trumpian country. But a great country that again inspires the world.
Zero chance of that
Our kids will just have to live with the mess. As the author says, there is just too much money aligned against change
2
To solve the climate change issue, one must “set a thief to catch a thief”.
The polluting industries are supported by capitalists who worry about loss of investment.
To solve this we need the ‘creative destruction’ of new technologies that would make the polluting industries obsolete. President Obama supported the NatGas revolution to kill the Coal industry. He succeeded. Today when Energy secy wanted subsidies and quotas for coal based power, he was laughed out of town.
If there are new technologies to kill the polluting industries, global capital would rush towards these technologies. They would see that these are successful in the marketplace.
AOC was right to provide a social cushion for the displaced workers. For which she was called a socialist. When Bismark wanted to industrialize Prussia/Germany, he went forward with a set of social laws (collectively called Staatssozialismus or State Socialism). AOC is trying to replicate it.
What a remarkably befuddled, complex, contrarian, and quixotic take!
If the author is worried about our capacity to instigate fear and hatred, he’s a little too late and a lot too lightweight. Scapegoating and repression are surging already anyway—with no promise of abatement as the press for migrations intensifies.
A wartime mobilization WITHOUT a “human faced” enemy is, of course, exactly what we need to save ourselves from our own worst angels. The author has the chagrined honesty to admit this much. The unlikeliness that we can pull any such thing off is what spurs such terrorizing tremors regarding future recriminations.
@Joseph F. Panzica
Scranton is anything but a lightweight. Too late - yeh, he thinks it probably is, although he certainly supports attempts to head off disaster. The question is, what is Plan B, if mitigation and adaptation don't work. That has been his primary focus. Try his most famous book, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization, a book highly praised by Naomi Klein.
1
The American genius of WWII was to keep the fight "over there" and away from our shores (Hawaii being a single day casualty).
And so must be our objective in the Climate War. Keep it over there. Let the displacement of the masses of people and the dying-off stay and remain "over there", while we protect our shores.
Too much industry? Let China and India deindustrialize and Africa not industrialize.
Too many people in the world? Let the populations contract in India, China and Africa, while we continue our slow population growth.
Droughts and Floods, lets make sure we have the resources to build irrigation infrastructures, sea walls and the like to protect our shores.
That is fighting a war to protect Americans.
The problem with the war on climate change is the time delay between cause and effect. The heating up of the earth is caused by fossil fuel carbon dumped into the atmosphere years ago. For the war to be won years in the future significant decreases need to be addressed today. If not the war will be lost.
Climate change if left unchecked will lead to WWIII, just ask the US Military. Seems that when you have millions of starving people they just get crazy, look at Syria. We can fight climate change now on our own terms, or fight a raging Mother Nature later as well as her Axis Ally, starving people.
By the way I give the professor a C- for arguing both sides in his essay.
2
Remember when there were a few cases of Ebola in the USA? The Government and hospitals sprang into action then. Mass shootings, opioid deaths and car crashes - no so much. Unfortunately, perhaps only when climate change is linked to a disease vector that kills a lot of US citizens will climate change be take seriously enough to act upon by our leaders. Sad.
1
all pols use war in a vain attempt to convince americans to believe what pols want them to believe.
we've had the following:
a war on drugs
a war on poverty
a war on gang violence
a war on terror
it's an overused trope.
1
It's a survival issue on a massive scale.
Roy Scranton - please see the Bahamas. Think that type of storm is not coming on a more frequent basis. Take a look at the Australian farming districts, look to the extremely concerning water crisis that hit Africa this year. WWII had a significant and cruel impact on parts of the world. Climate change will have a the same - but worldwide and no one knows yet to what degree.
This is certainly more realistic than most discussions of climate change, but I still don't see any mention of population growth. We just won't acknowledge the unpleasant reality that climate has changed before in human history, but you didn't at that time have huge numbers of people living right on the edge of food and water supply. The countries that can continue to supply food and clean water and power are putting up walls, and the others are going to descend into starvation and chaos. If you're not willing to describe the problem, you don't stand any chance of ameliorating the problem. We have a great test case coming up in Gaza: the UN, which has subsidized Gaza's constant attacks on Israel and Fatah by feeding its people, says that the clean water will run out in 2020. Will the world demand better behavior in return for life giving water? Or just continue to beam proudly as Gazans continue to threaten violence on their neighbors?
It may be hard to mobilize America against climate change.
But it is relatively easy to mobilize America against the consequences of climate change.
1 - Let's make sure that the masses of people displaced by climate change don't invade, occupy or otherwise illegally enters our country.
2 - Let's make sure that we continue to develop our industry and be very, very rich, so we can have the resources to deal with climate impacts (hurricanes, building sea walls, etc) as needed.
3 - Let's make sure that other countries (China, India) don't come out ahead of us economically, militarily, in the coming decades, so we are the ones allocating the climate pain.
4 - Let's have Manhattan Project like scientific programs on how to mitigate consequences for Americans.
Yes. Indeed. Let's plan to win. Let's plan to be one country that emerges from the climate disruptions on top. With the least amount of losses.
That is our job. The rest of the world can fend for themselves.
3
Wow, I’m worried that some people might actually think you’re serious and agree with you, not understanding your sarcasm.
3
It is extremely difficult to mobilize people against climate change because the worst effects will not occur for at least several decades and nobody can be certain exactly what will happen and when. This is the opposite of war where the worst is occurring in the present. And unlike a war which can occur abruptly climate change has been occurring gradually which makes it hard to feel things are changing at all as changes sort of become the new normal. Despite several decades of warnings about climate change by scientists we probably all know people who seem to not care at all about this threat. Although they may agree there is problem they are not taking any actions to reduce their carbon footprint.
2
never forget the wartime privations suffered by americans during world war 2, much less those suffered by japanese americans.
everything was rationed. gasoline, milk, bread, butter, meat, rubber, nylon, and a host of other staples of modern life.
the same will be true for the Green New Deal, and as is always the case, will hurt the poor most. so when americans' lives are punished by higher taxes to support the GND, their taxes will again increase to subsidize the poor who will be punished with the higher prices across the board.
3
Kudos to the author! His clear, concise, cogently argued op-ed is a refreshing rejoinder to the largely celluloid hagiography of WWII that has taken root and spread during the post-war years.
To me, at any rate, those who use American war mobilization in the '30s and '40s as a metaphor for what's needed to combat climate change now, seem to have fallen under the hagiographic spell of Frank Capra's "Why We Fight" series on the big screen or Henry Saloman's "Victory at Sea" series on the tv screen.
1
Often one hears people expressing their views on the actions "we" should take to fight climate change. It is each one of us added together makes up "we" of course, and the premise is "we" are all going to join together and do something, but on further analysis it is often if not always the case that the burden of the actions do not fall equally on each of us. In fact, it often seems that those whose calls for action are the loudest are the ones who bear the lowest burden, and of course the plans never include provision for contribution and indemnity from those bearing low burdens to those bearing high burdens.
This has got to change before any material progress can be made.
2
What was the point of this piece, really? Prof. Scranton spends the first 3/4 savaging climate activists merely based on their choice of metaphors. And yet at the end he admits "total mobilization may be our only hope. Ecological collapse is happening all around us" etc. Professor Scranton, we do indeed have an existential crisis, and you are really not helping.
1
@ghsalb
Unfortunately, if one is not familiar with Scranton's books, one can easily misinterpret what he is saying in this piece, as is evident by the highly varied postings. He is one of the most important writers on climate change, I think. Try his book Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization. Although he supports political actions to counter climate change, he is convinced it is too late. His focus is on Plan B, how a remnant might retain humanistic traditions in face of the forces of barbarism, which are already being made manifest in the world, See European and now US responses to refugees, 'Build That Wall,' and so forth.
There will be a war, but not between humanity and climate change. Rather, it will be a struggle between the haves and the have-nots for decreasing resources and habitable living spaces. The first casualties will be democracy and human rights. As the planet deteriorates a new dark age will descend, with no hope of return to what will be thought of as the good years.
3
One of the most interesting and important pieces I've read in the NY Times. Yes, "total mobilization may be our only hope." Amen to that simple truth. Bringing memories of WWll into the equation is brilliant. Puts us in touch with something we can understand. Whether we llved through it or not.
1
"mobilization during World War II was a national mobilization against foreign enemies, while what’s required today is a global mobilization against an international economic system: carbon-fueled capitalism."
Not quite true, the Old Red Scam's mobilization is not against carbon but capitalism and the enemies of the Left.
2
Here's the truth, ladies and gentlemen: climate changes. It has for millions of years. The ecology of the earth, seriously studied for less than an eye-blink of human history, is a mystery. Science, which ought to have a proper respect for doubt and humility, is now firmly embedded in political/religious belief. Belief is not science.
It was a radical change in climate that put a stake through the heart of the western Roman empire (plague helped, too). It was not caused by rampant internal combustion. It happened--but no one actually knows why. Unless someone is a representative from an outer borough of New York city.
There is no way that the Chinese and Indians and sub-sahara Africa can be jawboned into complying with our wishes and fears and political posturing--they like electricity.
So, if and when the climate changes, we will have to adapt--just as a warming earth caused our ancestors to move out of the African forest to hunt the edges of the retreating ice-sheets. Whining and House resolutions do not matter to nature. What will happen will happen; paper straws won't stop the evolutionary clock. Get real.
4
Nature is also indifferent to beliefs that ignore the science of how humans are swiftly changing the climate.
1
@Jarrell Yes, I have heard the homily that "97-percent of scientists" support the idea of climate-change. But then, you never read who, exactly, these scientists are or who advances this now written-in-stone figure...nor is it uttered with the knowledge that, not very long ago, virtually the same number of scientists did not believe that the world circled the sun and that bleeding was a cure for various maladies. That list goes on and on...but--golly!--we have, once and for all time, come up with a scientific truth that will not change. This is folly.
My point, if you had read it, is that nature is indifferent to US; our beliefs count for nothing; they are not a part of the electro-mechanical workings of the planet. Beliefs are illusions inside the not-terribly-well-developed brains of a species of ape. Got that?
This is the best article I have seen on the challenges of climate change. It is from MIT, everyone should read it.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610457/at-this-rate-its-going-to-take-nearly-400-years-to-transform-the-energy-system/
I hate to be a pessimist but I see no solution to this. The general population must see climate change as a clear and present danger equivalent to that presented by Germany and Japan in order to mount a "wartime level effort" to fight it, which will likely not occur until the progression of climate change is irreversible. The small conservation measures often suggested may reduce emissions a bit and slow the progress, but the headroom thus created will quickly be filled by relentlessly increasing world populations and the worldwide pursuit of higher standards of living.
One thing that might motivate meaningful action is a series of storms hitting developed areas of the US with the force that Dorian hit the Abacos. One hates to hope for disasters, but this is what it may take.
8
We should mobilize at a scale larger than required for WWII, but we shouldn't compare the size, complexity, and consequences of the two efforts?
I'm not negative by nature. Maybe Naughty. But, not negative and yet I'm on the glass half empty side of this one. Here's why; humans by our nature do not react well to predictions or any future looking forecast. Especially in a doomsday scenario like climate changed. It's in our lore, chicken little or the boy who cried wolf, both are tales of exacerbating the truth.
Because, of this view by all of humanity, we won't act until there's significant pain. If all of Greenland's glaciers melt Miami is gone. Ocean levels will be up 5 feet, currents will be radically change, the jet stream will change and Canada will be the new bread basket. Millions will die. That's wave 1. Super hurricanes will come feasting off the warmer water and the salinity of the oceans will kill the majority of marine life creating food shortages and further driving famine.
Wars will happen as millions of displaced migrants will flood into countries seeking basic resources to survive. We might go to war with Canada taking over their country to capture resources for areas that are now effectively deserts. New York will be destroyed along with Boston , Philly, Washington , Charleston with my town Charlotte being beach front property.
This is not a probabilistic scenario. It's the default. There is no sky god coming to save us. The true caretakers of the earth the Native Americans had lessons on conservation that we threw away. Now the earth mother will get her due.
Our arrogance is our downfall.
8
Wow, thanks for bringing these issues to the forefront; contrasting WW2 with our present climate change. It is a different kind of war for sure. Your books look very interesting!
It is past Actually, the essential threat of our time is the rampant greed of industrial entities worldwide. The oil and gas industry alone has been blatantly irresponsible in it's abusive relationship with the earth and it's resources. Many times the warnings have not been headed in favor of insidious greed. We are now on the threshold of the greatest threat to mankind since the very existence of humanity. If this is not a bigger threat worldwide since WWII, nothing is or ever will be. Making excuses for this threat is irresponsible and indicates a level of educational stupidity, in favor of monetary gain. It is my opinion that an education is afforded to lift humanity to higher aspirations of truth and reconciliation of strength to solve the challenges of coexistence. The world has ample resources to respond to those challenges, yet man has exploited those resources for shameless materialism. In the age of instant information we are not progressive in our responsibility to mankind. Material greed has changed the world for worse. It's past time for us to realize the earth does not need us. We need the world. The arrogance of our leadership has lead us to the very point of destruction. The time for debate concerning this threat to humanity has passed. We have crossed the Rubicon. It is past time to humble ourselves and solve the problem. Our children deserve better.
I agree to the extent that in war, at the end there are winners and losers. With climate change everyone ends up losing.
1
Has anyone read his book 'Learning to Die in the Anthropocene'? I haven't but I assume this opinion excerpts and updates on it. However, he makes no mention of the Jonathan Franzen article which has a different humanist thinking approach so I guess this was submitted before that. Regardless, this piqued my interest enough to read it - unless somebody replies with a compelling reason not to.
It is going to be worse than a world war. This is an extinction level event we are hurtling towards.
2
No absolutely not Global Climate Change is not World War, it is much much worse.
I can imagine nothing worse than planet holocaust.
There is no need to hate the enemy to mobile its demise. Clean renewable energy is already blocking the arteries of cash supply to the fossil fuel economy which is in the process of atrophying and being vanquished.
3
An effective mitigation of global warming may be the only thing that will end the excesses of corporate, consumer capitalism by changing the ways companies as cartels produce goods and services and do business, but it will also require a strengthening of executive power over huge masses of people in order to compel them to comply with life saving edicts.
In short, the world is currently facing a state of emergency in order to survive. Only the current generation is mobilizing and can transform economies and politics.
Prof. Scranton. Thank you.
"Climate Change is not World War". True. If we do not address the growing Climate Change, it may lead to war time like catastropes around the globe. Both War and Climate Change is man made.
Both War and Climate Change can be prevented. While wars can be avoided through real discussion, dialog and negotiations, we see it differently when addressing the problems surrounding Climate Change.
Climate Change is occurring in all parts of the world. The weather patterns are changing in unpredictable proportions. We see the result and impact on Climate Change, here in various parts of our country. We have seen the most recent destruction in the Bahamas.
Our elected leaders must understand the threat to our Climate is real. It is not a hoax. Scientists and Professionals have provided the results of their studies and urging our leaders, take appropriate action on Climate Change. It is not about money and profits, it relates to lives of people, the well being of people and the habitat, that is facing the problem.
We have to arrest the problem today, for the benefit of our future generations. If we do not take this seriously, it will be more devastating than all the wars have inflicted in our living memory.
Great piece.
We already see the curtailed freedom of speech. Anybody who dares criticize a policy (like giving $100 billion annually to an international body to distribute to third-world despots for climate mitigation projects) is labeled a "science denier" and silenced. They make no distinction between the handful of people that say climate change is not real and the vast majority who simply feel the proposed policies are inadequate. All must be silenced.
And, if the social order really does break down, I'm glad that I have my firearms and ammunition in the safe.
2
Perhaps if we use the language of war to frame the fight against climate change, the GOP would be more willing to throw money at the problem.
It is bigger than war, and like nothing we have faced before and yet it is familiar. "We have met the enemy and it is us" (Pogo).
We are being challenged to see our survival as a something other than a fight between us and them.
Obama and Clinton had the right idea. We need to focus on alternative energy, and the infrastructure to support it. We could have begun a decade ago, and created new jobs in rural areas throughout the country. Rather than seeing old coal towns die off, we could have been seeding growth for the next century. Instead, we point our fingers at other countries doing nothing, rather than taking the lead. We try to save coal and oil, at the expense of the islands, towns and states impacted more an more by natural disasters.
1
Any approach to reversing or even arresting climate change that fails to focus on carbon capture is destined for failure. The reasons are two fold: (1) the economies of a couple score countries are dependent upon or importantly driven by hydrocarbon extraction, consumption and export; those countries (all of OPEC, Russia, etc) are not changing their spots anytime soon; and (2) most of the third world's growing population is advancing in affluence supported by an even more rapid advance in per capita energy consumption, and hydrocarbons are being priced to meet that growing demand.
Just say it -people are too self-absorbed to fight climate change, on all parts of the political spectrum. How many would give up their carbon-heavy airplane flights to "experience other cultures" ? What about the just- in- time mentality that expects overnight delivery of consumer goods made halfway around the world, with the concomitant truck traffic? And, the biggie in the room, power generation for all of our devices that means covering large swaths of land with solar panels that confuse and kill birds and destroy any bits of nature under them?
The reality is that the entitled humans on the planet have to give up their carbon-heavy activities so that poor people can have some benefits of modernity. That kind of conscious individual effort, along with a international re-emphasis on empowering the women of the world, which results in reduced childbearing, might save some areas.
If the recent past is any indicator of our immediate future, it ain't gonna happen. We can't even have conversations about politics without devolving to violence. And, city dwellers are more disconnected from nature than ever before. Then we have to count on the inevitable solar flares, which will knock out the power grid and force the issue. Hopefully enough species diversity will survive to repopulate the devastation we humans are creating through our selfish ways.
I write this on a device that uses hydropower electricity, with an awareness of the irony and conundrums of our trajectory.
1
America, and other rich nations have a singular and important role to play; they need to develop technology that means that developing nations will, for selfish economic reasons, pursue low/zero carbon emissions development and environmental mitigation strategies.
That will require the creation of an Environmental-Industrial complex as powerful as the present Military-Industrial complex and with an even more rapacious international sales arm.
Don't kid yourself, even that won't stop warming.
Climate changes IS NOT existential, WWII was existential.
1
It's not world war? Tell that to the people in Puerto Rico, whose island was demolished. Tell that to the people in the Keys during the last hurricane, or the people in Houston, or in the Bahamas. Tell that to the midwest, after the ever-growing number of tornados. Tell that to the people in California, who ran for the lives from an inferno.
Those are just some of the stories in our country. Let's talk about other nations, throughout the world, who may lose homes, lives, and even countries through the impacts of climate change. Tell that to the people who will be starving.
1
Mobilization to control global warming will most certainly be entirely different from WWII. What these mobilizations have in common is the recognition that they were to combat existential threats and the belief that the mobilization would be successful.
Aside from that, they are completely different. Instead of building machines to kill larger numbers of people, combating global warming aims to save lives, including those of our decedents. Success will necessitate building cooperation between all nations, not just a subset of allies in war. This will require massive diplomatic efforts to resolve conflicts. Perhaps humanity will recognize that resorting to warfare to address conflicts is the most certain way to undermine the cause of survival of our species.
You bet it's different.
2
The Green New Deal isn;t about addressing climate change.
It's about central government assumption of control of the economy by controlling the means by which businesses can operate, through the use of coercive regulation.
It uses fear as its primary motivator.
And like all socialist efforts, the fear is based on a false narrative.
Sadly, the radical left wing Democrats have done their homework, and with the assistrance of fellow leftists from Europe, have adopted an approach that parallels the Komsomol model - the inculcation of youth with the philosophies and ideals of the socialist state.
In this case, the target is expanded beyond youth - in terms of gae - but still targets people who accept statements without question.
4
The science is settled.
1. Climate change occurs because some amount of GH gases are caused by humans.
2. Reducing these gases will prevent the atmosphere from being overwhelmed, leading to the demise of humans.
3. This will happen at some point in the future.
Is there a metric to know when we will see a reversal in the climate change process? e.g. some ppm CO2 measured in the atmosphere
Is there a preferred location and season to make these measurements?
What is the rate of decline, such that we know when we are on the right path?
Would a good analogy be, reducing GH gases is like applying less force on an auto accelerator?
If there are not answers to these questions, it just seems the argument is, "We must stop or we will all die."
And, if the GIs in the picture are getting ready for D-Day, why are they carrying Springfield 1903 bolt action rifles?
1
during the great depression there were strong Democratic Party concerns for labor rights and great fears of economic stagnation. The mobilization to fight WWII advanced both these causes significantly and took place without curtailing union strength.
May I suggest that a general mobilization of national resources to invest in a zero carbon economy can be done by diverting investment in wasteful sectors like finance and moving other resources from fossil fuels, which create problems to others that create solutions. The problem of over full employment can be addressed by encouraging worker savings, remember defense bonds, which will serve to build wealth throughout the population and provide the foundations for continued prosperity.
1
Since we're on the subject of war, is anyone else reminded of Pogo's cry: "We have met the enemy, and they are US!"? We will all have to dramatically change how we live. WWII is an illustration that we can, albeit painfully, do that.
1
Roy Scranton is an eloquent writer on these topics but this article is poorly edited. That mobilization may be our only hope comes in at the tailend of the article. Everything that comes before undermines it.
1
“what’s required today is a global mobilization against an international economic system: “
True, but unlike a wartime mobilization, the will to act jointly is the critical factor. We already have the technology to switch to clean energy sources now. All that’s needed is to incentivize the change to it, along with conservation schemes for forest preservation and expansion. This “war” would be a fun exercise in breathing better air, having a healthier environment, and saving that environment for ourselves and our descendants. We just need to act.
2
Some years ago I heard journalist Mark Hertsgaard, author of "Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth," say that if WE PLANT 14 BILLION TREES trees in the next 3 years it will solve the climate change problem, although it will take 30 years to do it. We may have passed the cut-off time for that to work, but in the absence of any other clear and simple proposal, this still seems to me a good place to start - immediately.
2
very thought provoking piece. i agree that perhaps some of the analogies to WWII are either misplaced or poorly understood. and perhaps they should be avoided going forward. but the idea that everyday citizens have to look inward and decide how much they are willing to (voluntarily) sacrifice to combat an absolutely massive threat to humanity still remains. the citizenry cannot just rely on politicians and national governments to do the right thing.
2
Thanks for the history lesson prof. Now excuse me while I prepare for the impending wildfire season and fight for humane treatment of climate refugees.
3
Ten years ago, the idea that climate change would be major issue in today's presidential campaign had vanishing credibility. Calling out a "profound lack of unity" among Democratic candidates does disservice to their new-found conviction on this issue. It is conviction driven by events and by an increasingly convinced and alarmed electorate.
We should not underestimate the galvanizing force of catastrophic events--nor of the crises that will come. But threat of climate change is different from threat of war.
In the past decade, the US has suffered dozens of deaths and multi-billion dollar property losses every year from weather events made worse by climate change. Were these losses suffered due to an alien attack during even a single year, the country would be at arms and the government would be pouring resources into the fight. The experience of 9/11 proves that point.
The science is quite clear, a tipping point will be reached, I prophesy it will come within the next decade. Governments will have to respond, but the paths diverge beyond that point.
Either there will be international cooperation with great upheaval, or nations which can will try to literally wall themselves off from the problem while those with lesser means will descend into chaos and doom--a doom that will surmount all walls.
The statistics of war--so grimly recited in this piece--happened in about 5 years. Climate chaos will be worse, but will take longer. The drums are beating.
2
"whether climate change should come before economic justice, racial justice, revitalizing American democracy, labor rights, immigration reform, health care and gun control":
Fighting climate change IS about economic justice, racial justice, revitalizing American democracy, labor rights, immigration reform, health care and gun control. Not so obvious, immigration is increasing from displaced persons around the world because of climate change; example, coffee crops failing in Guatemala from extended drought and our own military warning of the social breakdown in developing countries as a National Security threat because of climate change. And gun control is one of two issues, through their funding, the fossil fuel industry uses to persuade voters to vote against their own self-interests and intimidate Congressmen. Revitalizing American democracy may turn out to be the main issue, not just in elections to come, but the Republican majority has packed the Supreme Court with what they hope are climate change deniers (the main goal being obstrutionism) or those that will cling to outdated precedent, when what is needed is a sea change in public policy.
After the Civil War, it was the war of 1898 that brought the North and South together to fight a common enemy. WWII more so because of dire need. Climate Change is also a dire need, demanding first education followed by political will.
(Alexander has sponsored oil bills, and with Clinton/Gore--no progress from '92-2000.)
Congress should impose a carbon tax that is totally and equally refunded to each and every American. If the tax is high enough, engineers and entrepreneurs will invent and deploy ways to produce electricity while avoiding the tax. Since the wealthy burn more carbon than the poor, this equally refunded carbon tax would reduce economic inequality somewhat. All countries should adopt similar policies.
I never cease to marvel at the undertaking that was US WW2 involvement in Europe and Asia. Those that doubted "the allies will save us", were not without reason. The logistics, supplies, intelligence, deployments, training for a type of warfare that had never been fought, all had to be delivered across massive oceans, and the expense ... Then of course that was the minute detail of successful prosecution. Yes, shear numbers were overwhelming on the Allied side, but someone still had to fight the fight. Which required a bit more than the largely drunken Congressional floors climate-rhetoric of today.
2
I started out enjoying this article and being informed by it. Born in 1964 I of course have no real reference point on WWII, though I do find it the most interesting period of modern history and feel I know more about it than most. After a while though, I wondered what the author is fighting against or trying to accomplish....rid ourselves of inappropriate rhetorical devices?
2
How much more foolish can supposedly rational humans be? Humans are destruction machines -- either way.
2
While environmental destruction has been the modus operandi of most businesses on Earth for as long as we have records of such, the closed-loop between those who work for and use business products is key to business success, even though they deny this, insisting only their owners are responsible for any results obtained. Yeah, fossil fuel businesses could work toward green energy products and infrastructure, but workers and customers MUST reclaim our power and force businesses to do this. Now, we all know powerful entities have many means at their disposal to harm workers and customers if we don't stay in our de facto slave niche, but we are signing our own death warrants if we do this. What can workers and customers do to influence or outright force businesses to step up to the plate and partner with us to forestall any further damage to Earth's environment? And here is a key point to start with: the Earth does not belong to us, we belong to Earth. How will this shift in perspective help us to start repairing the damage we have done to our only home in this vast Universe? I say start because repair will be the work of generations of people who decide once and for all to belong to Earth, not to ideology or profit.
I don’t think I understand why censorship would be required. During WWII they believed they needed censorship to guard against giving their enemies information about troop movements, weaponry, and military plans. I’m pretty sure there’s no information that we need to hide from this “enemy” - our atmosphere and the climate.
1
Re: '...Climate Change Is Not World War
We are underestimating both the deep national trauma of World War II and our present challenge..."
To this voter-citizen...there are only 2 essential differences between hominid_extinction via 'real', (Vs. Bush's, 'N, Blair's 'imaginary'...), Nuclear Weapons, Vs. climate change:
1.) Extinction by N.-W.M.D.'s would be a matter pf days to months, vs. decades, if mediated by climate change...
2.) The present administration...self described as 'Pro_Life', (...a superficially, 'religious' euphemism for barefoot, 'N, pregnant'!), can't seem to decide which hominid_extinction scenario is the more enticing, politically!
We are doomed.
1
@Richard Barry Hopeless. So there's nothing to worry about.
1
Climate Pearl Harbor or 9/11 will do the trick.
Just wait.
". . . total mobilization may be our only hope."
For those of you who believe this, opportunities to help create total mobilization abound. Join one!
https://rebellion.earth
https://www.xrebellion.nyc
https://www.sunrisemovement.org
and many more Extinction Rebellion groups and other activist groups around the world.
I spent two years, from 1944 to 1946, in the US Army Air Force in WWII and well remember those days energized by hate and fear and hope. But what we need is love of this planet and the wonders that are fast vanishing in a tsunami of greed and disdain for each other and refusal to face the reality that is just beginning to faintly signal the coming rewards for not paying attention. Millions died in that war and I do not intend to indicate the sorrows and grief were not immensely awful, but I see almost none of the love for each other that we so much need to face the billions who will suffer and die in the coming catastrophe. That huge stockpile of nuclear weapons we are spending trillions to refine signify how much love we have for each other and somehow the many governments around the world who are repelling those people fleeing the current horrors is a mere mild foretaste of what we soon may see.
4
Why don't you cite the one absolutely fundamental change: sharp cuts in population growth and reduction in absolute numbers of people worldwide? If you think climate change is difficult now, with a world population of app. eight billion, try it by 2050 or so when expected population will pass 10 billion. Add in the drive by at least half that number to greatly increase their "standard of living" -- i.e., resource consumption.
If there is a "war," we're all losing.
3
Maybe a better analogy would be the Cold War. The threat from climate change is just as grave, the stakes are just as high and it requires the same unity of purpose and commitment from our leaders. Unlike the imagined threat of the red scares the enemy truly does exist and thrive within this country and holds more power in the government than Joe McCarthy ever dreamed of. The crises is upon us but there has not yet been a Pearl Harbor level event to wake us all up, hopefully reason and science can do that but the clock is ticking and humanity is loosing this war.
1
The focus of this article is off point. The real question is: How do we mobilize people both to recognize the existential threat of climate change and to accept that much must be sacrificed to save our civilization.
The war metaphor is one approach. Perhaps the English professor could focus on that question. We need those who are expert in language to craft strategies for achieving the needed mobilization.
2
The more germane question - why are we fighting for human survival?
With human population at over 7 billion and still growing, until we actually begin to reduce world population all our efforts to impact climate change will be for naught.
We should be embracing the destructive force of forest fires, coastal erosion, heat waves, plagues, etc. These natural forces may be our best hope of checking human deprivation of the planet.
1
@Common Sense And it's difficult to believe that supposedly sane people argue how we're going to have to change things to accomodate the needs of another 2 or 3 billion humans.
@Common SenseYes, I've thought that also-- but what about the defenseless animal and plant species being destroyed in the process?
The motivation for change is coming in the form of killer hot spells, more devastating hurricanes, sunny day flooding, etc- no need to gin up fear of some evil foreigner as was necessary before WW II. The changes required might actually have some tangible economic benefits. Renewable electricity, even with storage, promises to be cheaper than fossil and nuclear energy. Changes in the way food is produced and other parts of the economy may result in additional benefits.
1
Without capable leadership throughout the country
at all levels of government and finance, we will not
sufficiently reduce our own emissions without an unforeseen technical "fix" that completely simplifies the response. There could be major reductions of international coal/oil investments but investment banks hang tough for the quick buck.
There will obviously be no national response until trump and his criminal denialist gang leave office. There can only be tweaks/minor feel good efforts here and there that won't deal with the major emission contributions from transportation, construction, agriculture, and energy use mix.
Every other major contributor to warming emissions faces the same situation. Neither China, India, Brazil, Australia, etc. are anywhere near where they need to be in adjusting their co2 emissions to levels consistent with long term survival, not short term growth.
As a result, it is inevitable that there will be unending generalized chaos with degrees of societal collapse as humans try their best, but fail, to muddle through droughts, floods, rising ocean levels, stressed out food chains, epidemics, you name it...there are not just four horsemen to this apocalypse.
Acidification of oceans, ocean currents changes, and rapid onset of weather pattern instabilities, felt strongest in agriculture and livability of cities are such immutable forces that humans will simply be incapable of responding adequately.
2
Battling climate change is indeed not exactly analogous to world war. It is actually much more urgent and epic, the consequences are far beyond anything humanity has faced before. But if leaders want to use war-like rhetoric to get the masses motivated, I'm all for it. This is a war we have to win, and we better start landing troops on the beaches soon.
1
Mobilizing to fight climate change is an oxymoron. Mobilization works by increasing production to meet wartime demands, getting people to work around the clock and forego civilian needs for military ones. But more production is exactly the cause of climate change. Dealing with climate change requires de-mobilization and de-growth. Climate change can only be mitigated if people take more leisure time instead of income, and buy more services instead of goods.
4
People, not governments, are the cause of global climate change.
If everyone started taking steps on their own to correct the problem, we could lick it (stop having so many babies, start using public transportation, stop flying everywhere!, walk or ride a bike, turn your heat down and your AC up...).
An Obvious Truth: Humans have become an infestation on this Earth, and we talk big, but are too self-indulgent to actually take the steps we know are necessary to save our beautiful planet.
Keep claiming that our governments need to do more, but the onus is on the People.
4
Fascism, like carbon based capitalism, had many powerful friends at the beginning of the struggle. There was a coup attempt against Roosevelt by a cabal of them before the war. The rosiest projections for unmitigated global heating have hundreds of millions dying. The people who prevented remedial action will join the Axis leaders in some underworld pantheon in a few years.
1
The worlds population has doubled twice since WWII and that was following an estimated 100,000,000 deaths from bombs, bullets and starvation.
At eight billion people and growing, the end in sight is not a pretty one. Just people, cockroaches and rats competing for limited food. I am placing my bets on the algae.
5
Engineering can solve the problem and it doesn't take anyone but the US. But, it will take the political will to get the ball rolling.
@Rocketscientist I see. So how will engineering solve the problems of adding another 2 or 3 billion people?
That is, since the engineering to make that possible is at the level of criminal negligence against the planet. And we can all see how well engineering doing in solving it so far.
1
It will take worldwide solutions, and that's achievable, only when we remove the arrogance.
i can see how an english professor writing about climate science would focus on the words of science popularizers and the metaphors of politicians. well, who cares?
and i regret the general run of reader comments that parrot the same old "science/technology/innovation will save us" or "big government programs will save us" or "overthrowing capitalism will save us." this is just the inveterate and infantile wish for big daddy and the tooth fairy. it motivates the cheap denialism that says big daddy doesn't exist, therefore climate change can't be prevented.
if climate change is going to be forestalled, it will start with you. yes, you there -- looking bewildered and hoping for paternal guidance.
true, mobilizing a nation for war is not mobilizing yourself to change ... but that's because you can't make a fighter plane, tank or munitions in your kitchen. you can, however, fight climate change in your kitchen -- simply by not wasting food.
what else can you do? ask yourself if you have even asked yourself that question. turn down the air conditioner? bike to work? install LED lights? eat less meat? buy local produce? forego jet airline travel? use an electric car?
if the world's children can take on change and protest, what's your pathetic excuse not to emulate them?
those big programs you're waiting for will only follow on a change in individual behavior -- your behavior. if you don't like the climate change solutions you see, go out and make some of your own.
@drollere
Interesting rant. You want the individual to be responsible for his or her own actions. Great idea... except history has proven that people don't and won't always do what is best for themselves and others. If they did, we would not have had to enact laws requiring people to wear seat belts. No one would ever put a lit cigarette to their lips or consume vast amounts of alcohol.
Sometimes a Big Daddy is needed.
Only now we have a Big Baby in the White House and he is telling the world that reckless and selfish behavior is not only acceptable but desirable.
Old habits are hard to break.
Let the new generation lead the way. The old generation will be gone soon enough. Just hope the world outlasts them.
The neutering of WWII and its successors has removed the main obstacle to the waves of war fever that occasionally run through this country.
The author evokes the real war.
We should remember a war of inequity: who gets killed and who doesn't. Of authoritarianism: restrictions on free speech, free press, freedom of assembly.
Of incitement against contrary views. Of propaganda and its technique which overhung the next generations. Of uncritical sanctimony. Of Gung-ho: We're Number One.
War isn't romantic. It's not a test of manhood. It's becoming a blob of red jelly.
Sometimes it's necessary. But we have to walk into it with our eyes open.
Sorry for repeating your points. But, they're worth saying twice.
1
And of course WWII was caused by governments.
To be nostalgic for wartime "goodness" shows you how safe people have become, thinking our "longest war" is somehow reflective of actual war (you know, when your enemy is actually attacking you).
What’s the point of this? Everyone understands that stopping climate change is not at all the same as defeating the WWII Axis. WWII mobilization is invoked simply as shorthand for all-out societal commitment to a cause. That’s something people can easily relate to. This comes across as a nitpicky academic exercise that is ultimately just defeatist.
Great up until this point: " what’s required today is a global mobilization against an international economic system: carbon-fueled capitalism." Sorry, but what's driving climate change is bigger than the simplification of carbon fueled capitalism. Adding roughly 6 billion new humans to the planet post WWII is one very obvious example. So is adding another 2 or 3 billion in the coming decades. It also transcends and is bigger than any system of political economy like capitalism - since democracy itself with freedom to prosper and pollute is a big factor.
4
"... rage, fear, grief and social disorder." Like the Ninth ward in New Orleans after Katrina, or the Paradise fire in California or Dorian in the Bahamas? That kind of rage, fear, grief and social disorder? It's here. We can deny reality or whine that it is too complicated but it is here. All of the nasty consequences the author lists at the end of the piece will likely happen by NOT mobilizing to act on climate change. But then we'll just be victims. I would prefer we come together to act because, whether in war or natural disaster, we all need something to do that gives us hope.
3
Mr. Scranton is correct in pointing out the flawed use of WWII imagery used to describe how to respond to the current climate crises. So much modern American lore is based upon the romanticized version of how the U.S. won the "Good Fight' of WWII. Indeed we did win, with the sacrifice of millions payed in sweat and blood. But this is not the language and ethos we need to best solve the challenges of a rapidly changing global climate. This is not the classic fight of good against evil, us against them. Rather, we need to engage in the language of cooperation. How can we work together, both locally and globally to slow the rate of the warming climate? Political leaders of the world must engage both science and civil engineering on a massive scale. Another word we need to use more often- Inspiration. With the proper shift to concepts of cooperation, innovation and inspiration we can drastically cut our carbon foot print. The technology is not something out of a futuristic scifi movie. It is here and now. The problem is the lack of imagination in how to implement. Too many of our current world leaders are stuck in the past verbiage and psychology of WWII. These same leaders are also addicted to fossil fuels and are terrified about how to truly move away from them. The truth is that green energy technologies and industry can provide economies with a huge boost in growth and financial stability. If only the U.S. could step up and be a world leader again in this bold new paradigm.
1
One good idea that has come forth is Tom Steyer's Youth Mobilization Corps, a national service to take immediate actions to protect the coastlines and flood plains, help people to relocate, fix infrastructure, improve the food supply and farming methods, and work on social justice issues. But it would take visionary leadership and people from all walks of life to participate and help orchestrate it. Kids around the world know their own future is at stake so they would be willing if everyone else gets behind it - instead of sitting at their screens and ordering in.
1
I think this is a brilliant piece. The language of war is so misplaced here, and it is through language that we know, understand and communicate about that which we contend. I dare say that what we face now is unprecedented. Is it existential? I don't know, and some much smarter than me seem to think so.
The slow, inexorable pace of warming makes it so difficult to see and so easy to accommodate. I look out my back yard at the trees and flowers in bloom and i don't see it. I'm left complaining with my friends that it's hotter this summer than last, and then go about my business.
I don't think there will ever be an event sufficiently triggering that mobilizes humanity to take this on in a way that the experts say needs to be taken on. I do my best (solar panels, electric car, a "victory" garden, etc), which I know is woefully insufficient.
If there is hope (and, at times I see a faint glimmer), it will be with the youth empowered and enabled by those in my generation, to overturn all that has gotten us here and re-make humanity on this planet in a way that works for all life.
Only one quibble..."...the country now spends more on its military budget than the next seven nations combined, "
The US actually spends more than ALL other nations combined.
ALL.
COMBINED.
And has done so for many, many decades.
1
As someone whose two uncles fought in WWII even as our family ultimately lost over 50 member in Auschwitz, I appreciate the author's realistic take on many aspects of society as well as the long term ramifications.
That said, I think he's leaving out the massive amounts of cooperation that were also evidenced. My mother told me with pride about giving up stockings, planting victory gardens, etc. I think if we limit our imaginations to apocalyptic scenarios these next very hard years will be much harder. We can mobilize from love, cooperation, compassion too...and many of us are!
1
"flood of government money that truly did lift all boats, the transformations required to address climate change would have real economic losers. Many major players in industry, tech, energy, and government have little incentive to go along with climate mobilization, since it would undermine their profit and power."
This seems to ignore the subsidies that already exist for large agriculture and extractive industries. The major players that would have their profit undermined, but that is what is needed. More people now are being undermined by those players now, we need to stop worrying about their profit and power. Those players are the enemy if there were a war.
As someone whose two uncles fought in WWII even as our family ultimately lost over 50 member in Auschwitz, I appreciate the author's realistic take on many aspects of society as well as the long term ramifications.
That said, I think he's leaving out the massive amounts of cooperation that were also evidenced. My mother told me with pride about giving up stockings, planting victory gardens, etc. I think if we limit our imaginations to apocalyptic scenarios these next very hard years will be much harder. We can mobilize from love, cooperation, compassion too...and many of us are!
1
The war and military metaphors for dealing with climate change (and environmental degradation more generally) are misleading. All that is really needed are relatively simple political choices to harness the power of economics (and technology) to promote healthy and sustainable practices. Economics works on incentives: once policies are tweaked so that all incentives are aligned to favor sustainability and penalize pollution, good things will happen spontaneously.
First (and hardest) is to charge the full cost of pollution ("externalities") up front. Don't call it a "carbon tax", call it a "carbon cleanup charge".
Next, adjust taxes and subsidies so that, e.g., a KW-hr of renewable energy is at least 1 cent cheaper than a KW-hr of electricity from fossil fuels. (I know renewable energy is intermittent and hard to store - that's a genuine technology gap, but it could be closed with affordable research effort - surely not as hard as the Manhattan project...).
Again, taxes & subsidies could accelerate replacement of internal combustion engines with electric ones, the development of bio-degradable packaging, forestation, sensitive habitat preservation, and pretty much anything else you can think of.
To paraphrase Jean-Claude Juncker, politicians know what needs to be done; they just don't know how to get re-elected afterwards. That's where the background "culture", such as the campaigning of Greta Thunberg and others, can help.
1
Fact: we will NOT rise to the challenge of climate change. Fact: since finding another "like earth" home somewhere in the universe is a nearly impossible task with present or near-future technologies, we should count most of the species on the planet, including humans, reaching extinction within the next century.
2
Sorry to burst your fashionable nihilism, but the totality of the human race will not be rendered “extinct” by climate change... more than likely “Our Way Of Life” will. First World countries will have the wherewithal to adapt to the changes. The Mantra of the 22nd century will be “Save What You Can”
This is an opportunity for the worlds great innovators to accelerate development of green solutions and the US can benefit greatly by being the leader and then disseminating these solutions around the world. We cant stop other nations from leveraging their own fossil fuel resources but we can make it economically unattractive if we incentive green solutions. The world wont need gas as much if there are no gas fueled engines. A responsible government cannot divert incentives to any climate damaging technology while we transition to Green tech. None.
Obviously our current "leaders" who are irreversibly bound to fossil fuels need to be pushed out of the way. We cant have a government that promotes coal, or endless fracking, or eliminates emission regulations. They are public enemies and need to be jettisoned.
On the other hand we may not have the character and intelligence to do this Much sooner than we think this will begin to cause global destabilization. Mass economic upheaval, famine, refugee migrations, wars, resource seizures. and before long this planet will be host to endless conflict, economic deflation and collapse, and there will be fewer people and less industrial pollutant production, but for all the wrong reasons. They are not producing much greenhouse gas in Syria or Yemen these days. The emerging conflicts just over clean water supplies will destabilize our world. It wont take a thousand years, probably not a hundred. This is our time to act.
Reading this piece and the comments makes me feel that many in the world have a death wish; or at least would rather die than change their lives; or are too depressed to care. Perhaps we secretly welcome a massive die-off so that nature can right itself. What do we have to be so proud of as a species? Maybe I will feel better when our current President leaves office.
1
Climate change is a war, but the opponents are... ourselves. Humans are the responsible agents for GHG emissions and we have to change that. If we discount the future deeply and simply continue to spew carbon dioxide into the astmosphere, we have defeated our own species.
You are forgetting the sacrifices that fighting climate change will require of you: your SUV, meat, vacations with air travel, and so much more.
And the losers will be those who come too late to the table--many Floridians, especially those with beach front property. People in New York who will have to pay to surround the city with sea walls.
2
Prof. Scranton...To wit: 1) check Dwight Eisenhower's library. The 1961 original text of Dwight's speech referred to the 'military-industrial-congressional-complex' before "congressional' was taken out so as not to offend politicians who did, and now still are, lining their pockets with defense-industry monies; 2) "How would we know when the 'war on climate change' ends?" I'd frame that as: 'How would we know when war ends?' It hasn't professor, and the U.S. has been at war for 236 out of 243 years...confronting climate change will be every year from now until human extinction; 3) "What kind of work over how many years would it take to unify and mobilize the entire industrialized world — against itself?" It starts with incredible, internal and individual efforts to dismantle human, greed-driven egos that are primed by the fear-of-death to place wants before real needs. And THAT's why anti-consumption is "bigger than war;" 4) Doesn't a “World War II-scale mobilization” pale in comparison to the mobilized, past-generation exodus of climate refugees across the world, as the race for damaged, disfigured and/or absent resources has increased,? and 5) "...it would mean social upheaval, violence, censorship, curtailed freedoms, dubious compromises and radical changes." Absolutely, for one can't eat money. Real freedom does not function w/o some restraining form. The killing function, however, does, which is why our contemporary problems still are dressed in old-fashioned costumes.
1
From David Griggs, former head of the IPCC science working group secretariat, in a conversation with four Australian climate scientists discussing their fears for the future and where they are moving their families to to minimize coming impacts:
“You can say you don’t believe in gravity, but the apple will still hit you on the head.
You can say you don’t believe in climate change, but that’s not going to stop it getting hotter.
I think we are headed to a future with considerably greater warming than 2 degrees C. … that means a lot of people will suffer. A lot of people will die.”
https://youtu.be/jIy0t5P0CUQ
We’ve wasted decades and now it’s too late. Have a beer while you can.
2
When was the last time humans did anything to avoid a true global disaster in advance?
No, we will only truly "mobilize" when cities start sinking, droughts create mass starvation, migrations of millions threaten national security, etc.
Let's just hope we don't lose it all before we can rebuild it in a sustainable way. Most likely with a dramatically reduced global population.
Evolution is a harsh mistress.
3
A fraction of two billion Homo sapiens fighting with conventional weapons was nothing compared with almost eight billion plus competing for a drink from those last melting glaciers.
3
This author wrote only one sentence for the absolute bottom line truth: humanity’s survival DEPENDS on us mobilizing. The idea that these things are far off in the future is entirely false, with states along the Gulf Coast feeling climate change and pollution’s effects for most of this century. America is both the biggest producer and consumer of oil, so any Green New Deal struck here will have a massive impact. It also will shape the future of economic growth.
The horrors listed in this article detailing war have a counter part in what climate scientists have outlined. Food shortages, loss of potable water, massive refugee influx from Asia where the biggest cities on Earth threaten to be underwater, causing exactly the kind of social upheaval you described in WWII.
And with regards to the idea that industry would not be willing to change, I don’t believe that Facebook or Amazon should be able to hold the planet hostage for the sake of billionaire gain. What do billionaires, or home ownership for the average American mean in the context of wars fought over water scarcity? I’m sick of an older generation with this “nothing we can do” attitude. Your certainty allowed you to go through life concerned about your petty personal problems and ignore the call to action. Amitav Ghosh calls this period of human history “The Great Derangement”. And this author is particularly deranged.
1
You might be right, you might not, but this article is just idle banter.
It's just taking up space. It doesn't really help us with the problem.
Leaders are using the language about WWII because it communicates. It captures the imagination. That's part of what leaders are supposed to do. They're supposed to find the concepts it takes to spur people to action. "Give me a big enough lever and the right place to stand, and I'll move the world."
You wrote this article to, what, tell us that WWII and climate change aren't *exactly* the same thing? Who knew? Who could have figured that out, without turning to magazines and newspapers?
Sheesh.
1
We can only wish that climate change is just a world war. Only the The Soviet Union's casualty rate (bumped up by Stalin's excesses) will compare with what's in store for all of us if we fail to reduce carbon emissions (and limit reproduction to two children per family).
1
Here's the triggering quote: “a new national, social, industrial and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal era.” The author then spends considerable rhetorical capital explaining how its wrong to compare mobilization against climate change (an existential threat by any honest measure) to actual war, which is not what the quoted language suggests. This reminds me of the iconic Saturday Night Live Gilda Radner sketch about saving Soviet Jewelry.
1
There is an enemy - the climate change deniers. Those in high places (e.g. the White House) are bringing about a situation far more catastrophic than the damage inflicted during WW II.
1
If you think WWII caused a lot of social and economic upheaval, just wait until entire countries and regions become inhabitable. It will make the Syrian migration to the EU look like a bouncy house birthday party.
3
People, not governments, are the cause of global climate change.
If everyone started taking steps on their own to correct the problem, we could lick it (stop having so many babies, start using public transportation, stop flying everywhere!, walk or ride a bike, turn your heat down and your AC up...).
An Obvious Truth: Humans have become an infestation on this Earth, and we talk big, but are too self-indulgent to actually take the steps we know are necessary to save our beautiful planet.
Keep claiming that our governments need to do more, but the onus is on the People.
1
"What would total mobilization really mean? Judging from what happened in World War II, it would mean social upheaval, violence, censorship, curtailed freedoms, dubious compromises and radical changes in American culture and politics. Yet it also just might mean the survival of human civilization."
There it is, the radical Left's core theme, "the end justifies the means." So we need to get rid of the Bill of Rights, "for awhile" so we can get Americans into right-thinking, right-speaking, and right-acting, censorship and violence as needed, all as defined by those who know better.
Of course it is only the Left can lead us to the land of sustainability, and upon reaching that happy day they will of course restore Bill of Rights. But between now and then, they know best.
Robes Pierre, Pol Pot, Mao and Stalin all knew best too.
6
Belief in climate change has become a religion. Hard to argue with someone over their religion. I usually steer clear.
5
What is the point of this article? To diminish the discussion of climate change? A slight crack that questions those people proposing action? The NYTimes - and any responsible news - should be devoting most of its ink to climate change. In terms of life and death and our future, it is the story.
Wrong. Today over 7 million people are displaced due to climate driver wars and famine. And this rodeo has just begun. Just ask the people of Paradise, CA. The culmination of this epochal event will create far more suffering than any of our “world” wars.
Another obstacle to mobilizing the country, unmentioned by Scranton, is that many papers in peer-reviewed journals such as Nature show that the costs vs benefits of climate change are very different in different countries and in different US states. Northern countries have benefits greater than costs, tropical countries costs greater than benefits. I remember seeing a similar map (I think to the county level) that showed northern states like Maine & North Dakota with benefits greater than costs, Texas with costs greater than benefits.
(And did you notice the photo of the Japanese-Americans was by Ansel Adams?)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-017-0197-5
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature15725
https://www.nature.com/articles/532317a
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14693062.2012.728790
In all times of great adversity and massive change people (and their governments) act without concrete assurances that their actions will save them. The scale of the problem is unprecedented and terrifying. However, courage is not the absence of fear but action in the face of it.
At least we are beginning to talk about the challenge in a way that reflects its actual gravity. We’ve calculated the problem and mapped the solutions -now is the time to act.
A global green society is cheaper (do the math), healthier, smarter, wiser and more joyfully abundant.
We can’t undo what we’ve done but we CAN unleash the power of nature and of people to resiliently respond and adapt to our collective error.
This coming Friday children around the world will be striking as a direct challenge to us adults who are really good at reading and writing but have failed to act.
I for one will be joining them. Strike with us.
“If you don’t change your direction you will arrive where you are heading.” - Lao Tzu
2
FDR and many others saw the looming danger long before WW 2, yet gov't was constrained from taking concrete action by the same forces as exist today - existing economic arrangements resisted being disturbed. Then as now, business held all the high cards. Pearl Harbour was a blessing. It was simply too much to ignore. It swept the table clean, cards, chips and all. It had all the right elements; spectacular violence, clearly identifiable enemy, existential threat. It made mobilization possible. Climate change will surely create even more disruption, trauma, deaths, and transformation than WW2 ever did, but which fire, flood, drought, or famine will present the same attention-focussing effects and reaction as a good old fashioned military attack? 9/11 almost did the trick but the focus was blurred and the event was opportunistically exploited in the service of political advantage and the interests of the military-industrial complex. (Thanks Bush, Cheney, et al).
An old stockbroker friend of mine, dead sober, mused aloud upon what it might take to mobilize America's attention, to dislodge carbon-fuelled business greed from its death-grip upon the nation's steering wheel. "Maybe," he said, "it will require a bunch of Wall St. bankers hauled into the street and shot or hung from the nearest lamp-posts."
There will be disorder. Folks will gripe at missing Super Bowl, and other routine TV trivialities. Get over it. We must sacrifice or we shall be sacrificed
1
Let's face it, we mobilized for WW2 based on hate - especially racially based hatred of the Japanese (always present, but fed rocket fuel after Pearl Harbor). Germany was tougher - many Americans opposed another war in Europe. The German declaration of war post Pearl Harbor and U-Boat actions made i easier to build the case against them, along with a healthy dose of dehumanizing propaganda. I doubt this is a successful model to follow for dealing with climate change - it's a hopeful issue, hope for the future and fear of what may come to pass. We all know what needs to be done, but how to get us all to agree on how to move forward - and to defeat the roadblocks - I fear is simply beyond us. And that, I guess, speaks volumes about what our fate may be.
2
For all the reasons stated in this piece, effectively dealing with the challenges of global warming are huge.
But there is an easy first step.
No climate deniers should be elected to serve in public office, period.
No matter what other issues, be they abortion, taxes, guns or whatever -- if you believe in the science, you must vote, and that vote must be for somebody who also believes in the science.
1
the problem is that resource scarcity, caused by climate change, will cause wars.
3
In this country, the only thing standing between the solution to climate change and the eventual end of the planet, is politics. With money being the driving factor and American corporations remaining opposed to doing anything substantial to curb the problem, it is highly unlikely we will see any climate change legislation in the near future.
Only when coastal homes start falling into the ocean, islands start disappearing from the rise of ocean water, when salt water invades the streets of Miami and Charlotte, and low lying agriculture lands are no longer productive because of salt content, will climate change get the attention it deserves.
Mr. Sranton:
You say: "The experience of war brutalized, dehumanized and traumatized millions. More than 30 million Americans were uprooted from their homes and migrated across the country for military or economic reasons."
Absent action equivalent to the GND climate change will create more refugees and more displaced people -- up to 100 million. It will usher in hunger, famine, disease, flooding, fires, and mass extinction.
Yes there will be a few economic losers -- although they will be compensated and retrained under the GND -- but we will all be losers if we don't act.
The fact is, meeting the challenge of climate change is equivalent to war. To suggest otherwise merely shows you have idea how dangerous climate change is.
4
In the aftermath of WW2 the British decided that if the nation could mobilize for 6 years of war on multiple fronts never stinting to do what was necessary to prevail, then it could do the same in peace time, and build schools and hospitals and provide a safety net for all its citizens without whom the rich and powerful would otherwise have become subjects of the Reich.
If we can have a war on drugs then surely the battle against environmental degradation is worthy of such an epithet, especially since failure to stem the potential outcomes may well result in every bit as much and quite possibly more disruption and misery than did WW2. It may not be a traditional war against a human enemy, but a war it nonetheless is and the forces are gathering. Recognizing it as such in no way minimizes the upheavals of the past or the sacrifices people made. It honors them.
All true. And as we know from War on Poverty or War on Drugs. Politicians of all types go for that word "War" when they're looking for widespread support. Perhaps more novel is the current appropriation of the term "New Deal." I expect any historian will take issue with that one as well.
1
I believe it is our moral duty to do absolutely everything we can reverse climate change and restore a climate that is safe for all life. The WWII mobilization frame offers a glimpse of what is possible, though we must learn from its mistakes and prioritize justice, obviously eliminating the xenophobic and racist atrocities that harmed so many. The upheaval and unrest that accompanied WWII mobilization will pale in comparison to the social unraveling we will experience if the climate crisis goes unchecked. We must act. To do nothing is to condone the suffering and death of millions. I want to hear from our leaders that this matters — that they will take the necessary action — so I have joined The Climate Mobilization in calling on Congress to declare a climate emergency and start a mobilization urgently. You can sign on too at climateemergency.us.
1
While it would take global mobilization to thwart the worst of global heating it might be too late anyway since the permafrost is melting with its attendant accelerating methane emissions. Think Venus.
Estimates vary but it seems unlikely at the current rate of increase in methane emissions that we have even 11 years until we reach a positive feedback cycle where global and particularly polar region heating feeding back into even more accelerating heating eliminates the possibility of recovery.
WWII mobilization was done with an immediate horizon of 5-6 years to eliminate the threat from the Axis Powers' aggression but the U.S. prepared for years before it actually declared war. We don't have that long and yet we dither and deny.
Nine years ago I began a personal campaign to become carbon negative in my personal household footprint and have successfully done so. (Zero personal fossil fuel consumption and more solar power electricity produced than all personal consumption.) For all of humanity to do the same will take much longer...yet the only hope for the planet is immediate and massive mobilization. The near future looks increasingly dystopian and the end of the century seems likely to see a largely lifeless planet.
The enemy is not "carbon-based capitalism". The enemy is rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, pure and simple, and capitalism is no more in favor of that than any other system of organization of human beings, and not necessarily more prone to ignore inconvenient truths than any other system of organization of human beings.
5
Although the technical problems involving climate change aren't a matter of war, the social results of loss of resources are certain to increase the number of wars that happen. A great many of the conflicts taking place around the world now already have a significant climate element to them. The tendency to militarize crises (which we can see now on our own border) is only likely to grow stronger, even though it's a terrible policy.
1
The only thing that comes to mind reading this opinion piece is that as the ecological disaster that is human induced climate change really takes hold, it is going to make WWII seem like a minor regional battle. When, not if, desperation takes hold of the worlds big nations for diminishing resources of food, reliable shelter, etc, etc, you can expect way more problems in a world that is vastly more populated than 1941.
2
Thank you for the reminder. So many comments here take this as dismissiveness of the threat of climate change, or the need to act. I don’t. I see it as a bit of realism needed when war is used as modern mythological reference. For the sake of a global war effort, we did many truly terrible things. We have the potential to do so again, and if we do, it will begin with this sort of war rhetoric making it acceptable and “necessary”. The reaction to your reminder is concerning because reactionary rhetoric that wants to shut down voices warning of the terrors of a war mobilization approach is exactly how those terrors eventually become possible.
1
Rep Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Markey have only one solution to whatever the problem is; full government control of industry and curtailment of civil rights (free speech, free association, religious liberty). The solution is suggested no matter what the problem is; Healthcare, have the government take over. Climate change, have the government take over. Everything is an emergency, debate must be stifled, opposition must have evil motives. Maybe they intend to imprison citizens who they see as a risk, similar to how Roosevelt imprisoned Japanese-Americans.
Listen to scientist like Neil Degrasse Tyson and his message about the truly unlimited resource in the world, human ingenuity. He doesn't ring alarm bells because he knows that humans will solve the problem using their brains. Satellites will be put in space to reflect back some solar energy; storms will be defused with injections of pellets; nuclear technology will become cheaper and safer to scale up.
I have 2 kids and am not worried about the world I am leaving them. Capitalism has created Tesla and a wave of similar electric vehicles. The world is cleaner today than it was 50 years ago, we have more forestland and emit less pollution, all the while our citizens are richer and live better lives.
I am optimistic about our future as long as the ingenuity of humans is unconstrained. Concentrating too much power in the government will result in tyranny, not climate salvation.
3
@James
Tyson is not a climate scientist.
The momentum in Earth’s energy system and climate mean we’re likely already too late.
For example we’ve already destabilized around 6 meters of sea level rise equivalent of ice from the marine sectors of Greenland and West Antarctica’s ice sheets.
A large fraction of which will arrive in 50-100 years, goodbye most of our large cities and hello mass migrations making the planet ungovernable.
From just that one impact, never mind lack of water and food price hikes and heat waves.
1
Was surprised that the article didn’t mention the impact that the military industrial complex has itself had (and continues to have) on the global climate. The volume of fuel and steel that has been expended by our military activities must dwarf usage for peaceful purposes like building heat, food production and everyday transportation.
1
@Quinn O’Sullivan
The US Military is a huge source of carbon emissions. If the US Military were a country, it would be the 55th largest carbon emitter on the planet, larger than Denmark or Sweden. That's signficant, to be sure.
However, the US Military emissions simply don't "dwarf peaceful purposes like building heat, food production and everyday transportation." Curtailing US Military emission is important, but is only a small fraction of the problem. https://grist.org/article/u-s-military-emits-more-co2-than-most-countries/
@Brian Thanks for clarifying Brian.
On December 7 1941, United States was drawn into a war that the majority of Americans wanted nothing to do with. That Sunday everything changed. Monday morning saw huge lines at recruitment offices as men signed up by the millions to fight in WWII.
At the end of the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!, a film about the attack on Pearl Harbor, , Japanese Admiral, Isoroku Yamamoto says, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
While there is no proof that Yamamoto actually said that, there is more than ample proof that there is great truth to that statement.
America has shown throughout its history that it can meet any technical challenge and over come any physical obstacle. The atomic bomb and the lunar landings are prime examples of what we can accomplish when we are forced into a corner. An American first took to the air in a powered aircraft at Kitty Hawk in 1903. A mere 67 years later, Neil Armstrong stepped out of a space craft, built on Long Island by Grumman Aircraft, and left the first human footprints on the moon.
An assortment of Allied scientists(British and Canadian and others) led by the American, J. Robert Oppenheimer, were sequestered in the New Mexico desert and split the atom creating the first atomic bomb in less than 4 years.
Those challenges pale in comparison to the scale of the threat posed by climate change. With proper leadership and the determination of a multinational effort, change can be brought about.
2
How do we know when this war is over?
We are all dead.
Changing climate won.
The republican party and their extraction industry owners might have just made the question obsolete. There is plenty of money to be made in a Green New Deal, but it will mean oil men leaving some assets in the ground while the value of that oil goes to zero. Can they do that for their children?
Not so far.
7
From the Nobel Laureate Yale economist William D. Nordhaus: ”A target of 2½ °C is technically feasible but would require extreme virtually universal global policy measures."
Without those measures we’ll be taking the climate beyond human experience and adaptive capacity.
https://www.scribd.com/document/335688297/Nordhaus-climate-economics
2
Take a hint from Wall Street. They are building forecast models of how their investment products will fare with 10 billion deaths due to climate change. And 100 billion. And 200 billion...
2
@Zenon
There are 7.7 billion people in the world today. The world is expected to see a substantial reduction in population by 2100 from the present numbers. That is not counting Climate Change, Disease, Starvation or other natural disasters.
200 billion? Climate Scientist can't count.
1
I find this article to be offensive in so far as it compares one terrible world- wide crisis that negatively effected many nations for a narrow time frame and another that has the potential to ruin the entire planet for hundreds of thousands of years.
Humans are one animal in the vast animal kingdom and we fight amongst ourselves as other animals do. How we stand alone is in our ability to kill every living thing on earth and it is high time we take our actions more seriously than at any time in history.
5
Environmental dedregation is not climate change. Humans can mitigate environmental dedregation but have little influence on over all climate change outside of nuclear war. To beggar the majority of the citizens of the US will serve no purpose as it will have little effect on the climate.
3
Climate change is existential threat number one in my estimation. We have the capability but evidently not the collective will to turn this around. Must the short term gains for the few always trump the long term good of all? Sometimes I think we're all just walking talking bipedal lemmings headed for the cliff. We know better, but it just doesn't seem to matter. Maybe this is why we haven't been contacted by any advanced civilizations "out there." Is self destruction universal?
2
The peril posed by climate change and WWII have at least this much in common: The threats posed by the Axis powers to America were clear from at least the late 1930's. Yet most Americans thought they could ignore the problem. It took a dramatic event like the attack on Pearl Harbor to wake us up. It will take a similarly dramatic event directly impacting the United States, perhaps causing the displacement of thousands if not millions, to get us to confront climate change. By then it may be too late to effectively do anything. A few then will enrich themselves by taking advantage of the turmoil. Most will suffer. And, if you will permit me another modest prediction, we will blame everyone but ourselves.
2
OK, battling climate change is indeed fighting an existential threat but is not exactly like fighting WWII. Was a NYT opinion piece really necessary to so enlighten us? I'm starting to wonder about the direction of this paper ...
4
Most of this piece sounds like a rebuke of those calling for a WW2 type mobilization. But it ends with "What would total mobilization really mean? ...[I]t...just might mean the survival of human civilization."
The author buried the point; readers who didn't read the entire piece could easily conclude that the author does NOT believe such a mobilization is warranted.
4
But Roy, you just spent several paragraphs outlining totally valid reasons why such mobilization will not work. And you're right. But why the hopium at the end? These sort of contradictions drive rational people mad when reading articles about climate change. It's done. It's too late and you know it - so say it. Are you afraid of losing publishing or speaking opportunities if you're labeled a 'doomer?' What price intellectual honesty here?
3
Wait until a king tide floods New York city. Then we'll be ready to mobilize.
1
Climate change is a nuclear holocaust in slow motion. Waged blindly and moving slowly by oil, plastic, and corporate tycoons so as to look unassuming. With everyone now a consumer of corporate profits, plastic, oil and nonrenewable energies, and without anyone minding the ecosystem, this war will kill way more humans, plants, and animals than any previous conflict or war in history. And we don’t even have the resources or motivation to put up a defense. God save us all.
7
The Democratic plan for climate change is national suicide. They want to destroy our economy while the rest of the world does nothing. Of course their real reason is too not save the planet but to get filthy rich.
After winning office they will say that we can not remove our dependency on oil and they will nationalize the oil companies. Of which, the select elite will feed at the trough. The same with the health industry.
In every socialist/communist nation there are some who are more equal than others. But not us serfs.
2
The New Green Deal will create jobs and spur our economy. And if we continue to do nothing?
Other nations are involved in taking action to mitigate climate change (do some research). China is investing billions in renewable energy and expects to become the world leader in renewables in a decade. India has also invested billions in renewable energy.
2
Most of the movies today involve a hero or hero's saving the world. It's good vs evil and you know when good has a setback the next one in franchise will prove victorious. How much are the sciences of social psychology, sociology and marketing manipulating us? I don't know about you but I want to save the world.
Most people don't even hear the discussion anymore without attaching their own prejudices. "You're a trump supporter." In fact here can't be discussion of anything when you're on the side of good.
How did the schools come to the point where they are presenting climate change as proven science. It's not, it's a series of manipulated models. Kids are not taught critical thought and to accept what they are told. They are not equipped to understand that "science" has rejoined the long list of End of World religious charlatans and political propagandist.
Should we have mobilized in the '60s when climate change was going to end us all in an Ice Age or when the first steam engines were built in the 18th century? Has climate science really become so exact? Mass starvation and disease were to kill hundreds of millions but like climate change we have a handle on them and could do better.
If you understand the Nazi movement 20th century you'd know at it's roots was an ecology movement. There were to many people and to little land. This when the world population was 2 billion. Only certain people had the right to live. The people who Counted.
Climate change is no longer a debate. There has been NO scientific research study refuting the claims of thousands of scientific studies, based on observable evidence.
3
@Zejee
The predictions refute themselves. Also the further out in time the more inaccurate they become.
Aren't you pulling the number thousands out of the air?
I'm not denying climate change I'm doubting the math. Put it this way there are probably thousands of mathematical studies saying there are an infinite (or at least 2) parallel universes. Yet there is no proof. That's quantum physics for you. A lot of math but no proof.
Why employ the term "total mobilization"? Its provenance is Ernst Jünger's writings about the experience of industrial warfare. Jünger was greatly admired by Nazis whose masculinity ideal was based on the protocol of remaining resolute in the face of mass death.
We’ve been seeing numerous impacts catching many scientists by surprise with how soon they are occurring. In 2014 two independent teams of scientists reported that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is likely irreversibly retreating.
3.3 meters of sea level rise equivalent of ice there is being destabilized by a warming ocean and energy is going into the net melting of ice all over the planet.
The paleoclimate record indicates that increasing global temperature by just 1.5-2°C above preindustrial temperature commits the system to an eventual 6-9 meters of sea level rise, a large fraction of which could arrive within the next 100 years.
Corals may not survive this century of warming and acidifying oceans, and droughts and floods linked to global warming—and conflict linked to those droughts—have already caused four countries to face famine.
Because of the decades to millennial long lag between a climate forcing and our feeling the full effect, due to the thermal inertia of the ocean and response time of the ice sheets, the effects we are feeling now are largely just the beginning of the result of emissions from the 20th century. And emissions have been increasing steadily for decades.
We are also seeing numerous amplifying feedbacks: loss of albedo (heat reflectivity) from ice melt, permafrost melt, methane release and massive wildfires; the Earth is starting to wrest any possible further human control of the climate away.
We're about out of time on this, if not already.
5
Professor Scranton. Thoughtful piece, even though you often undermine your own thesis that responding to climate change is not the same as total mobilization in WW II. Indeed, there WILL be total mobilization. Massive relocation is inevitable. The only question is will it be hysterical in-migration to escape untenable heat and floods, or will it be organized, proactive and constructive as attempts to address the remaining causes of climate change. Other analogies also hold. Large parts of the entertainment industry is mobilizing opinion against the danger. The other "difference" you point to is also a similarity: Resurgent racism and xenophobia. Facing a threat will we turn on each other or on the problem? While the greatest generation was blessed with FDR, it looks like this generation is cursed with DJT. Finally, we still await the other great similarity. When will Pearl Harbor happen? Will it already be too late? And will we be so depressingly turned inward by tribal rivalries that we will still be unable to respond? Finally, anyone seeking total mobilization needs to look at the blueprint created by Governor of Washington State Jay Inslee. He saw the problem and has laid out perhaps our most viable solution. It's not good sign that he is former presidential candidate Jay Inslee, not president-elect Jay Inslee.
1
It needs cooperation worldwide. Instead of treating other countries as enemies, we should be reaching out to them with plans to save our environment.
The Paris accords which are still in effect til next year must be ratified and built upon with investment in new green forms of energy wherever possible. This is not rocket science. It means switching from fossil fuel extraction and burning to cleaner sources wherever possible (not nuclear which pollutes with long-lived toxic waste, and not carbon extraction which is a shibboleth of the oil companies.)
All countries are all involved in this crisis. Global corporations should be examined for their effect on global warming. And made to cooperate in this existential war on carbon release with existential penalties. After all, we can't breathe profits.
1
This is a rather odd column. There is no mention of the Depression and how many people were ready to be mobilized for WWII. There is also no mention of Pearl Harbor and the degree to which America was at risk.
The U.S. is done with the Great Recession but a lot of the world is not. There maybe no single attack but if the scientists are correct there will come a time when it is very hard to reverse the consequences, mobilized or not.
Well, we should stop using the language of destruction of civilization. Ecological disaster yes. But will we survive? Yes. We are producing more food than ever and not all cropland will be destroyed irreversibly by climate change, saying is blatant nonsense.
The less humanized grasslands, coastlines, coral reefs and above the forests, are being and will be pummeled. They will not dissapear but they might be impoverished badly. And those things are happening climate change or not.
Poor countries are pummeled by ... poverty and all that it implies, climate change or not.
Climate change is just accelerating the damage, but it as much a cause as symptom, and I cannot help but find the single-minded passion on this subject distressing. Climate change seems to be filling a religious void.
Edsall, you really don't understand the threat from climate change. Melted polar ice caps will put most cities (because most are coastal) under a couple or a few or several feet of flooding, depending on their proximity to the equator. Mass migration away from inhuman heat near the equator will cause immense social disruption. Pollution resulting from flooded cities & refineries & other chemical & manufacturing facilities on the coasts, along with marine heat waves (already happening) will break the oceanic food chain - bad news for us, since two thirds of this planet's atmospheric oxygen is produced by marine microorganisms that depend on that good chain for their existence.
This will be far worse than WWII.
3
The carbon cycle for the last 2 million years was doing 180-280ppm atmospheric CO2 over 10,000 years and we’ve done more change than that in 100 years.
The last time CO2 went from 180-280ppm global temperature increased by around 5 degrees C and sea level rose 130 meters. (graph of the last 400,000 years of global temperature, CO2 and sea level
http://www.ces.fau.edu/nasa/images/impacts/slr-co2-temp-400000yrs.jpg )
One amplifying feedback alone out of dozens, loss of albedo or heat reflectivity from Arctic summer sea ice melt, over the last several decades has been equivalent to 25 percent of the climate forcing of anthropogenic CO2. And that will continue to increase as that ice disappears by mid century.
The Titanic sank because by the time the lookout called the warning the ship had too much momentum to turn. The Earth has a lot more momentum, e.g. we've already likely locked in ~6 meters of sea level rise from the marine sectors of Greenland and West Antarctica, and decade to decade warming in the near term is also locked in.
That momentum is building and the higher we let global temperatures rise the greater the risk of them going really high as amplifying feedbacks strengthen.
6
There is, most definitely, an “enemy”, in this analogy to WWII, and that is fossil fuel industries: everything from Exxon to plastic bag manufacturers and electric utilities who cannot imagine a world retooled with carbon free energy. Then there are the individual naysayers who deny climate change simply because they’re afraid of massive job loss (never mind that AI’s coming for their job anyway). We have a scenario for bitter conflict between two camps of people: those who recognize the peril of doing nothing vs those who believe change will rob them of their livelihood.
2
Maybe, but your baddies have soldiers—like the millions of Americans who drive trucks. This is an excellent article, and a reminder that people have forgotten what a world war is really like.
1
Having served in the WW2 and living through the depression the experience is lodged in my bones. I can still experience what I felt as a teen ager, as a farm cadet, working on farms for six months of the school year, waiting so impatiently to reach the age of 17 so that I could enlist and fight the Japanese.
After Pearl Harbor We had someone to hate. T We were taught and to want to kill. Hate of mobilized us and forged us into a cohesive body. Hatred and fear so much stronger than reason.
Climate change does not evoke the same powerful irrational emotions that war does. It takes reason and understanding to realize the threat of climate change. it does not seem that is enough to mobilize us to deal with a threat that may be the cause of our extinction. In WW2 we had very powerful and intelligent leaders. Roosevelt and Churchill saw the threat sooner than most and led us. We could have not won the war without them. Today are in hands of a leader who is ignorant and incompetent. We are well on our way to self inflicted suicide.
10
During WW II, The United States was “not going to sit by, after we’ve won, and watch their system (Britain & France) stultify the growth of every country,” FDR told his son Elliott in Casablanca in 1943. He was fighting to save civilization, not a return to the status quo as after WW1. President Roosevelt’s vision of the United Nations has made world wars in the military sense unworkable, so a global war to stop Climate Change is going to perhaps be more dramatic is some ways, as this author himself admits - “it also just might mean the survival of human civilization.” Which makes it even urgent that our next President not be a climate change denier. We need more than a Green New Deal. Like FDR, we must ignore the isolationists and appeasers and demand “unconditional surrender” from the polluters who are killing the planet, so they can never attempt it again. A candidate who fights for this can mobilize the people, as FDR did then, win in 2020.
2
"We have seen the enemy, and he is us" Pogo
Scientific breakthroughs are certainly central to this existential problem that we face. But the socio-cultural mobilization necessary to support that effort will require more than the investment of capital no matter how nimble (but also interest-vested) a market economy can be. What is required is a transformational movement. An ethical shift that may be based in possibly a religion or other cultural overrides of our current myopic condition.
Humans have always been able to unify and complete great projects when there is an "Other" to oppose. We are "good" at that. It is possibly a cognitive essentialist inheritance. Tribalism at different scales. But WE are now the other and cutting off our own legs... slowly boiling frogs.
So what am I talking about here? What is necessary? Some sort of "religious" movement is required. A global confessional community that harnesses our tribalist sentiments against ourselves, or more importantly against a "sin". What we are doing to the planet needs to be redefined as that new sin. It is a sin. The sin that encompasses all sin.
3
I started this article, based on the title, predisposed to strongly disagree with Prof. Scranton. Metaphors don't have to be perfect to capture something, and there aren't a lot of ready alternatives to describe and perhaps inspire what we'll need to do to address climate change. Stepping back, I also see a lot of early stage experimentation in the social sciences about how to communicate these issues. While it's getting better, it's still not as ready and well-tested as it needs to be. I recommend social scientists and communications professionals maintain a spirit of humility, not being so overly certain about what will work, while they work to improve their fields. We're going to need it. Back to the war metaphor, while the Prof. has shown that World War truly was more complicated and complex than I had realized, and the metaphor isn't quite as accurate or appropriate as I had thought, it is still pretty good for now until the above gives us something better. (What pithy word or phrase captures something even more scary than war?) Climate change will require many of the same things as war. True, not necessarily all of them, and it is different in that, in some ways, we are "at war" with ourselves. But it will likely involve some inconveniences and probably sacrifices, as well as industrial re-tooling. There definitely will be surprises. It surely will involve many aspects of life. I hope we can avoid some of the ugliness, but there are no guarantee of that. But OK for now.
3
I'm not sure what the point of this article is. Either it states the obvious - that the threat of climate change does not involve soldiers being killed by enemy bullets (at least yet) - or it attempts to minimize the threat of climate change.
2
Am I the only one who thinks that the most likely scenario of survival - if we survive - is that the world's people 'coming together' and realizing it is sink or swim for all of us? And that scenario seems highly unlikely unless there is a massive 'event', and I mean massive, that impacts people everywhere. The equivalent of an asteroid hit, suddenly exposing our vulnerability for all to see. Right now, we in the West have the balcony seats, and will watch creeping apocalypse as it engulfs Africa and Asia, with us being a couple of decades behind. A slow boil is going to kill us; a massive disaster may save some of us.
1
A problem with fighting climate change is that the longer you wait the more difficult the task becomes. Every day the fight becomes more difficult than the previous day. Because we have in effect procrastinated for about three decades the annual percentage reductions in emissions needed to reach a goal are now much greater than in the past. Arguably achieving the goal of staying under 1.5C is no longer really feasible and even staying under 2C is almost out of reach. Because countries are in different stages of development it is difficult to mobilize the world. All sorts of justice considerations must be taken into account. And to make matters worse the US has been removed from its usual leadership role by electing a climate denier as president. Some blame should be placed on those who vote for climate deniers because we certainly cannot solve the problem if we are led by people who deny the problem even exists.
3
Maybe the only valid use of the war metaphor is to raise the alarm that we - and the world - are at the highest possible risk. Greta say she wants the adults "to panic" because they aren't reacting like the risk is real or grave. The only rational response as a globe is to 1) repurpose most war and defense spending to climate change actions and climate crisis preparedness, and 2) to educate our nation to emphasize local economy, local food, self-powered, carbon free living that provides greater safety, comfort and survival of unavoidable climate effects.
6
By this century's end one Billion people will be in exile and being forced to relocate from current climate warming projections.
The argument concerning a similarity to previous history is an intellectual argument.
1
The following statement is a first step in formulating the problem that "we" (human beings) are facing with respect to climate change:
"The problem of climate change is bigger than the New Deal. It’s bigger than the Great Depression. It’s bigger than war. The problem of climate change is the problem of how and whether human beings can live together"
The fundamental problem that we are unwilling to face the reality that climate change is inevitable, and that our species will eventually cease to exist.
The good news is that the world will probably continue to exist after we are gone. The bad news is that we human beings seem to be incapable of understanding and responding intelligently to "our problem."
2
We know clearly who the enemy is: ourselves. People seem to think that someone else, not them, will sacrifice.
Someone else will have one or no child, but I will have the number I want.
Someone else will ride mass transit. I will drive alone.
And so on...
By the way, someone should write a column on the sacrifices of the Soviet Union during the war. They lost tens of millions. We lost about 500k. We did not have our cities and economy reduced to rubble. Europe and Russia did.
7
The only reason why the truth that we are 30 years too late hasn't gained traction is the same reason why images, stories, films and video games showing the impending apocalypse in stark reality haven't permeated social media.
Denial has become a lifesaver in a sea of terror that almost all people are feeling at a subconscious level. Their survival depends on it. While the majority of people will eventually turn to the challenge, this subconscious denial will only manifest itself into greater and greater obstruction consuming entire regions and countries.
But it doesn't matter - and you won't hear that from our leaders - ever. The reality is we are too late. The systems we need to change are too vast - the timeline too long. Koyaanisqatsi.
We are all complicit. My poor grandchildren. God, I'm glad I won't live to see the end-game.
2
Global warming already has produced massive movements of people from desiccating areas to areas that continue to get rain for crops and farming. These shifts of population will increase and along with them will come the use of force to “keep them out.” Not war, but not peace, and many will die of starvation and bullets.
2
This is an excellent essay, thank you to the author and the NYT. I do not think it disproves climate activists point.Ckmate change is more dangerous than WWII, by an order of magnitude. The disruption responding to it will cause is immense though.
1
Wrong.
There is a clear enemy and it is the fossil fuel industry.
Climate change could destroy us all. You do not seem to understand the problem. Raise the world temp high enough and there are no crops, no water, and massive storms with incredible financial transformations. Before the creation of nuclear bombs at the end of WWII, at least we could come out of the war are repair and rebuild. Not with climate change. Please go back and read some detail about temp rise of just 5 and 6 degrees and you will see there is no return from that. We have an existential crisis which we did not have in WWII.
2
A great focus of environmentalism has always been the cost of industrialization. What is often lost on the ideologues is that industrialization has also realized massive benefits to humanity which we need take care not to lose. Change, social and environmental, is inevitable; the process of evolution never stops. To find the line between what natural change and unnatural change (all the while, keeping in mind that human beings are as much a part of the natural world as any other element of our planet) is difficult.
3
We all want to believe there is an enemy we can unite and fight against but what happens when people can't use as much energy as they want, have as fast of wi-fi, have unlimited access to the fastest cars? We are addicted to energy and all of the things that drive climate change. There are people profiting from it but remember, as this author has said before, the problem is ... the problem is us. It's a hard truth but a truth nonetheless. Are we prepared to do without when we can't even handle our wi-fi going out for one hour?
1
"Yet it also just might mean the survival of human civilization."
That is the LAST sentence in this article! Not the first. Moreover, the words "just might mean" perpetuates the perception that we can just wait and see. How about "it is going to mean the end of human civilization unless something is done." And the first sentence in the article.
Yet again an academic article on climate change that has chosen to parse the distinction between someone's choice of words. It will require a huge mobilization, like WWII, and it must start now. It can't wait, and it must dominate our focus!
We are indeed like a bus speeding towards a precipice with the passengers having some sort of belief that we can put it in reverse after we have gone over the edge.
10
We can get on with what needs to be done or,
We can look back over our shoulders and say we have learned nothing.
It is the degree of energy, of focus, of turning of attention that one uses to compare unfolding of WWII to the most urgent current environmental dangers. Of course it's a completely different scenario we face, but the degree of sincerity of shifting all of on human energy toward this urgent need is what I've always felt is at the root of this comparison.
1
Maybe we need to "stand down" and not "mobilize", since this isn't a war. We are not equal losers nor equal winners in the International economic system which benefits from a fossil fuel driven economy. That those who have been winning so big must now lose so big, seems fair. Nature is the Great Equalizer and we either recognize that or we die.
3
Very succinctly-
The climate disaster is probably preferable to a nuclear disaster.
Humans (a few? more than a few?) will survive the climate disaster.
An extensive nuclear war would leave the earth to the bacteria.
5
The result of WW2 was the creation of the military industrial complex: a reordering of society that greatly increased the influence of massive corporations in government policy by making their functions an essential part of global American hegemony.
What I see in this push to adopt new green technologies is an attempt to realign society to a new set of masters. I feel an abiding cynicism whenever somebody's "solution" to a problem is more money from taxpayers, and it just so happens they own or are friends with people who own the companies that are going to get all that taxpayer money.
Oh some of these technologies are legitimate, they'll probably help us become more sustainable as a society, but make no mistake: the people who own the technologies are not good people. They are opportunists. They are ambitious, and they will capitalize on the blind, mindless fervor of the climate lobby to catapult themselves into positions of indispensable utility to the new social order. The old corporate masters will topple, new ones will take their place, because today's public is no more discerning or cautious than the Americans of the 40s who cared only for bathing in the blood of America's enemies. Only now they want electric cars and solar power plants instead of tanks and bombs.
I plan to vote with my dollars and live sustainably as an example to my friends and family. Because I plan to survive what's coming, whether it's eroding environmental conditions or a new world order.
3
"Many major players in industry, tech, energy, and government have little incentive to go along with climate mobilization, since it would undermine their profit and power." And that IS THE ENEMY we are against. This is the enemy in the climate change war. Greed, capitalism, power, ego.
5
The science is clear: humanity is in its final decades. We’ve destroyed the place on which we’ve evolved. The Universe is so vast, I’m sure other life is out there, but the result will be the same. Species, like individuals, have a shelf-life.
2
Hows the War on Drugs going? Any victory in sight?
1
9/11/2001 brought exactly the sense of pride, unity, and willingness to re-examine the priorities of this country. George Bush, Richard Cheney,the voluble Ms Rice, and their cohorts stifled it, twisted it, toeturd it, and finally killed it. Then Wall Street strangled our potential for chane further and conspired with both political parties to deliver a crppling blow to our future econmic well_being Add to this the ugly tide of racism, intolerance, and coeporate media manipulation. Add to this thw threat of globak challenges and the rise of trumpism .and the odd whirlygig of zlightly aakew Democratic politics.
Not a pretty sight
It is much easier for humans to understand an action with the word 'war' in it (War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Terror). It simplifies everything. One thing humans don't want is nuance, as I think this author is saying in a roundabout way.
WWII was a somewhat organized dislocation of people's lives. And the enemy was quite clear. Now are living through the early stages of the beginning of the end of our species and there is nothing organized about the response.
In reality, we are subject to the same laws as all other species. When I was born in 1948, there were less than 2.6 billion people in the world. Now the number is over 7.7 billion. Any biological system that overpopulates begins to poison its environment - extreme air and water pollution, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, food shortages, new parasites and microbes. You get the picture. Well, many people won't.
Humans are disinclined to connect the dots. Systems thinking is not one our strong points. We tend to see the problem immediately in front of us - e.g. an unprecedented heatwave - and turn up the air conditioning without a second thought as to how our comfort is killing a species of spider in a forest thousands of miles away.
I am grieving for everything we are bringing to an end, but not without being grateful for my small life, and for all the moments of joy. The buzz of a bee, the blossoming of a tree, the flash of a wing and the song of a bird. And hot showers.
So typically human.
9
@youcanneverdomerely1thing,
what a beautifully worded comment.
I, too, am grateful for the life I was given, as well as grieving for everything that is lost.
Unfortunately as the end gets closer, I fear people will target scapegoats for blame.
Best to let all of that go, and just savor every sunset we can, surrounded by the ones we love.
In my case I have a ten year-old son, and while I can lay down my life (well into middle-age), I’ll spend my remaining days trying to figure out how to get my son to safety.
1
This author is the first I have heard state that our climate crisis is more threatening to world order and human populations than The Axis Powers in 1939.
The threat is certainly different for the reasons he identifies.
Another difference is that we did not know we how we could win until we had The Bomb, at least in the Pacific. But we do know how to win the climate battle. All the tools we need to solve the problem are known technologies and policy programs.
What we lack is political will.
Another difference: after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor we had no shortage of political will. I think political will is what McKibben is talking about when he references WWII mobilizations. Americans sacrificed and served willingly because of the threat. Now all people are threatened.
We plead. Our pleas to our leaders are growing stronger because we want to avoid a climate catastrophe that kills millions. We know that the death of millions will generate the political will to enact policies to stop this crisis, but we want to avoid that.
Unfortunately, the fossil fuel industry seems intent on foiling our attempts to save millions of human lives. But do not ignore this coming die-off. If we do not stop the climate catastrophe, there will be dead bodies washing up on shore across our world, and our hospitals will be full of sick people. Migrants will flee hot areas and seek safety in the north.
Why not just avoid all that with Carbon Fee and Dividend? HR763!
5
It's amazing to see an honest assessment of what it would take to reverse climate change. When will we be allowed to talk about the only practical solution, population reduction? Or is this an veiled attempt to outline what that would look like?
1
There is a simple solution to climate change: climate engineering. We already know how to cool the planet by emulating the effects of volcanoes. We need active research in these areas, rather than hysteria about the end of the world. We also need to be aware that the demographic shifts over the next decades will finally begin to reduce world population. The problem is not "capitalism", but rather the very human striving to improve one's lot in life.
2
Not sure what the author intends to accomplish, but like WWII, we are surely in a time of rage, fear, grief and social disorder. Countless Americans who have experienced midwest flooding and recent hurricanes realize we are caught in an existential struggle for the future of the planet.
"More than 400,000 were killed in WWII, and 670,000 more were wounded". Climate Change will kill millions and thousands of species will die.
Climate Change IS a war. There IS a clear enemy and its name is greed which is epitomized by Trump and the oligarchs who keep this misguided fool in office.
WWII had FDR. We have a president rooting for the enemy.
How will we know when the “war on climate change” ends? That’s easy. It doesn’t, but when global temps decline, when the oceans stop warming, and we replace ignorant leadership globally, we will have turned the corner.
Do I think “we” will win? Not by a long shot. I predict that Trump type ignorance has pushed us past the point of no return.
The abyss lies ahead.
7
If climate change is a “war” then we have met the enemy – and it is us. There are too many consuming, polluting and over-breeding humans on our planet for our current way of life to be sustainable.
3
No, climate change is not world war, but needs to be world cooperation except in the mind of Trump who sees it as a war against America proving that paranoia reigns.
5
Human beings tend to not understand or even accept an existential threat until it has rammed through their front door. Investing in prevention and the wisdom of caring for resources at hand are not part of the American psyche. This is still the land of endless frontier, which has grossly translated to the land of endless greed.
So mobilization on a grand scale ain't happnin'! Yes, there might be a token scramble when disaster rains down on a devastating scale, but all too little too late.
We are too proud to see ourselves as the defining pestilence of this disease.
It is said the "Meek shall inherit". What does it mean to be meek? This is not a passive, submissive, subservient stance. It means actively caring for the glory of this precious life.
And most of all it means feeling the divine fulfillment that lives abundantly in our human heart. Feeling this joy is the true antidote to greed. And greed is the cause of this disaster.
Funny, life's sense of humor. The answer was right with us the whole time. There is nothing we lack. It just begs to be discovered.
Good luck!
1
And, critically, unlike any war, the real enemy is us, or at least our addictions to fossil based energy.
1
Rhetoric always, or almost always, trumps rationality. At the very best our species is in for another 'dark age'. This time, and there have been others, it will be global with no refugia to seed a new beginning.
2
World War II was a transient event. In comparison, climate change may cause humans to go extinct.
Yet like the propaganda that occurs in war, the media have misinformed most Americans.
On a certain level the underlying facts are clear. World population in 1980 was about one billion. Now it is over 7.5 billion. The last doubling of population occurred since 1972.
Doubling the population doubles the use of fossil fuels, other things being equal. Thus, in spite of prodigious efforts in developed countries that recognize that climate change is a problem, the world use of fossil fuels continues to rise year after year due to population growth.
Fighting climate change is impossible without also limiting population growth. Yet religious groups in the US have effectively gotten the media to censor all discussion of the link between population growth and climate change.
Thus the US avoids informing people in poor countries of birth control options and access to abortions by its Mexico City Policy.
The result is that Africa is projected to double in population by 2050.
Consequences, as described in the recent book, "the Uninhabitable Earth," will be horrific. Many regions in the tropics will become virtually uninhabitable because of high temperatures. The young will die of kidney failure due to persistent high temperatures.
Yet our Democratic candidate Joe Biden called China's one child policy "repugnant."
We need a rational discussion and the media have deserted us.
4
An extremely thoughtful piece.
In addition to the fine points raised here, I have always found offensive the co-opting of the term "denier" in climate discussions.
It cheapens the movement and the memory of the most hateful, racist, murderous regime in the history of mankind.
1
There will be wars, wars for water, green space, cultural validity, basic resources...The combatants will be the progressives versus the regressives.
That stupid movie "Water World" comes to mind.
Essentially, we will fight a war to determine if enlightened civilization survives or if it is displaced and reduced to rubble by the ignorant and selfish people who willfully deny the humanity of 90% of the Earth's population.
2
A recent poll conducted by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that “... nearly half of [survey respondents] say they would be willing to pay a $2 monthly tax on their electricity bills to help combat climate change...” (Washington Post, 09/13/2019).
In other words, Americans tend to see the climate crisis as a half-a-latte-per-month sized problem. Hardly on the scale of sacrifice required to prosecute a world war.
5
Nietzsche said “the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive.”
Only horror story writers, allegorists, novelists, like Philip K. Dick, Edgar Allen Poe and Franz Kafka, can imagine the metaphors needed to encompass the “social upheavals” that are to come as Homo sapiens realize the earth’s ecosystems are damaged beyond repair.
Sadly, there is no turning back. There is no quick fix. We’ve sold off earth’s Eden for a plastic bottle of water.
Oh, you say, he speaks too bluntly, too harshly. He’s hyperbolic. He’s a doomsayer.
I’d reply, read Kolbert’s “The Sixth Extinction,” Wallace’s “The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming.” Turn the pages of Vollmann’s “Carbon Ideologies,” Rich’s “Losing Earth: A Recent History.” Go back and read what Rachel Carson predicted in “Silent Spring.” Are not most of Carson’s American springs now “silent?”
Jonathan Franzen hit a climate fretter’s nerve with his “New Yorker” essay, “What If We Stopped Pretending?” Franzen wrote that “The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it.”
Roy Scranton describes a similar notion as Franzen did when he foresees the social upheaval and violence that will occur as we face the existential threat of climate change.
Our hope is to find a new form of hope in the tsunamis of hopelessness that will become our everyday lives.
I wonder: Who will write the fresh metaphors we will need to survive what is to come?
5
Whoever said it was war, even a world war? Climate change, frankly, is far worse.
7
Climate change is MORE than "World War"—
It is a battle to save the very earth itself, and all it supports.
7
I don't understand why one, or some, or all, can't see opportunity (the silver lining) the in the humongous cloud of global warming (and many other interrealted environmental threats ... economic, social and political opportunity.
It certainly won't appear anytime soon with a retrograde misanthropic bore in the White House.
2
Now think about Russia. They lost more than 25 Million people in the war (by some estimates total losses were 90 times that of the United States). Major cities were flattened. The United States has never experienced in full the horrors of modern warfare. Imagine Pearl Harbor and 9/11 every week for years.
3
As difficult as it is to mobilize the nation against climate change in normal times, it is impossible to do so when our leader insists it's all a hoax. The first step in combating climate change is to elect a president who recognizes it as a problem. In fact, we might need a paradigm shift in human thought around the globe before anything meaningful gets done. 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 important and what is supposed to survive - producing minds programmed de facto for dirty tricks and destruction. These minds see the survival of a particular belief as more important than the survival of us all. When we understand this, we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity.
See RevolutionOfReason.com
1
Hi,
It is a World War, it is the extinction of our life as we know it. It is time to stop with the genteel approach over our morning coffee, reading your column and shaking our heads, saying, "Oh yeah, we need to do something."
Until we treat it as an attack on our very lives, we are dead. Pure and simple. Sacrifices? You bet we need to make them. Change of our life styles? Oh yeah.
But it is your world too - albeit for however briefly. Me, I'm working on my ark. Let's see: two ...
3
One more pedantic splitting of hairs mansplaining the destruction of civilization--whether through climate change, war, the erosion of democracy world wide. Energy that could be better used combatting these tragedies. Enough. Take real action. Do something.
1
“The experience of war brutalized, dehumanized and traumatized millions.”
And so will climate change.
7
The author talks about the total mobilization required for World War ll.I grew up during that war and well remember the sacrifices and the tension of the times.It was a time of upheaval and everyone’s lives were indelibly changed.As an elder now I look back and realize that maybe everything I experienced was not that dire.Food was rationed but the lack of sugar was probably healthy-there were no extra cars so I had to walk everywhere.There were few toys so we pretended and used our imagination.The civilians were mobilized and were unified in Air Raids and civil defense.The war was a dreadful struggle against two Powers determined to defeat our country.Climate change mobilization would force us to adapt, to sacrifice and to plan.That is not bad.There would be mighty challenges but we would not be on bloody battlefields trying to defeat a Hitler, a Mussolini or a Hirohito!
3
Hi,
It is a World War, it is the extinction of our life as we know it. It is time to stop with the genteel approach over our morning coffee, reading your column and shaking our heads, saying, "Oh yeah, we need to do something."
Until we treat it as an attack on our very lives, we are dead. Pure and simple. Sacrifices? You bet we need to make them. Change of our life styles? Oh yeah.
But it is your world too - albeit for however briefly. Me, I'm working on my ark. Let's see: two ...
1
The author, an associate English professor, confidently states that the effects of climate change are nothing like the disruptions of war, but professors of climate science who are actually experts in the subject disagree. Wait until food riots, mass migrations, rising of sea levels that wipe out entire coastal areas as suitable for habitation, all of which are showing signs of happening already.
Scientists show hockey stick graphs, in which whatever the effects of climate change are right now, acceleration increases rapidly and even suddenly after a period of time, for example when massive glaciers melt and dump water into the world's oceans, there's no going back from that.
"There will be real losers" of a serious effort to combat climate change the author states, but there were losers of the war effort as he himself points out, bizarrely seeming to miss his own point. Yes anything done on a massive scale will have effects both good and bad, but imagine if people confronted with Hitler said no it's too risky, there will be losses. In fact people like Charles Lindbergh said exactly that. Thank heavens Lindbergh's argument's weren't listened to, and if we're lucky neither will the arguments in this article.
2
"Americans of Japanese descent were interred in concentration camps"
really? I don't remember seeing gas chambers and crematoria in pictures of the relocation camps? I dont remember seeing images of starving Japanese-Americans or seeing them crowded into bunk beds
To call where the Japanese-Americans were interred "concentration camps" is intellectually dishonest and denigrates the memory of the 6 million who died in real concentration camps. shame on the professor
1
These are the reasons I've previously argued FDR was America's first democratically elected fascist. That's what "fascism" means: The complete economic and social reorganization of a people to meet a perceived existential threat, real or imaginary.
As noted, we believed WWII was an existential struggle for the future of the planet. All the sacrifices, misery and consequences are therefore irrelevant. You do what you have to do because you have to do it. That is the mentality we need in order to approach climate change. Hence, the analogies. Time is running out. If we don't act, we will all surely die. I'm sorry if that reality inconveniences you.
However, as Prof. Scranton notes, climate change isn't quite like fighting the Nazis or the Japanese either. Most of his concerns aren't really the issue though. What does victory look like? We have a measure for success. CO2 parts per million reliably under 300. That's victory. How does industry mobilize against itself? You can make money going green just like you can make money inventing mass production.
The point where Scranton is terrifyingly right: Climate change will require a globally coordinated effort on a scale that makes WWII look small. I fear our situation more closely resembles the Third Coalition against Napoleon. We are attempting something too complex for our capabilities while we jealously guard our own interests. We don't really believe in our heart of hearts that Napoleon means an end to continental Europe.
2
Sigh. I guess we will just have to accept our own extinction as a species then. We can't and won't change to do anything about our fate as beings killing our own planet.
3
Simplistic. In order to mobilize hearts and minds and fight the status quo -- which means slow death for humanity -- big picture people used a metaphor. Your piece demonstrates your fine memory of those horrid war years. And it also demonstrates your lack of understanding for the imperative before us. So congratulations. You got your eloquence published in the NYT. Hopefully it will not tamp down the energy others are trying desperately to build.
1
Am I the only one that understood Scranton’s misleading headline? Yes, his point is that profound. Yes, we must reconfigure the paradigm, immediately! Ten years ago was the perfect opportunity and we failed because of corruption. Unless our candidates put it together like Scranton, game over.
1
Mr. Scranton, it's a Metaphor, not a World War, live with it.
2
The Norse text Völuspá (which is part of the Poetic Edda) was probably written in the shadow of a climate crises that took place in the 500s: “smoke wreathes up around the [world tree] ash Ygdrasil, the high flames play against the heavens, the graves of the gods, of the giants and of men are swallowed up by the sea, and the end has come.”
It shows the trauma and impact of the disaster, as societies fall apart in its wake: “great wars rage over all the world. Brothers slay each other for the sake of gain, and no one spares his father or mother in that manslaughter and adultery.”
The swiftly changing climate leads to worldwide violence.
Perhaps our past is also our future.
1
The Norse text Völuspá (which is part of the Poetic Edda) was probably written in the shadow of a climate crises that took place in the 500s: “smoke wreathes up around the [world tree] ash Ygdrasil, the high flames play against the heavens, the graves of the gods, of the giants and of men are swallowed up by the sea, and the end has come.”
It shows the trauma and impact of the disaster, as societies falls apart in its wake: “great wars rage over all the world. Brothers slay each other for the sake of gain, and no one spares his father or mother in that manslaughter and adultery.”
The swiftly changing climate leads to worldwide violence.
Perhaps our past is also our future.
1
For someone who is an English professor I am surprised that you are having problems with using WWII as a comparison or an analogy to the climate change issue. No one is saying they are the same, they aren't, while WWII involved major threats to civilization and was global in nature, it is not the same thing, in many ways climate change is more complex because it affects literally the entire world, every inch of it, and affects human beings and every living creature (though obviously the devastation of WWII and the creation of the Atomic bomb caused potential and real problems to living creatures).
There is another parallel to WWII, or the runup to it, that for a variety of reasons people ignored the threat of the rise of Hitler and the threat the Japanese posed. Also, like with climate change, a lot of people de facto supported Hitler because they saw him as a lesser threat than the USSR, he was seen as a bulwark against Stalin, not to mention of course the money made by companies like Ford and IBM doing business with the Nazis. And like that analogy, protecting and promoting the fossil fuel industry is putting the economic livelyhood of those involved in it above the potentially human civilization threat of climate change and all the horrors it can bring (mass droughts and famines, mass migrations dwarfing what we see today, diseases and plagues literally). And it is going to take a mobilization on a global scale to solve the problem, instead of denying it.
1
"Existential struggle for the future of the planet" is exactly what present situation already is for some and will soon become for many. This is what those who can see, the train wreck coming, and want to get out of the way and urge others to do the same, especially when we cannot do it individually. Toning down the conversation, calling a rhetoric, is disinformation. "Countless Americans" already experienced some consequences of global warming. Whole nations, albeit small, are already fighting for their survival. Some larger ones, including USA, is already roiled by fascist, or at the very least, Nazi wave of politics in sync with climate-induced instability and wars in Middle East and consequences of already subsided wave of immigration to Europe. But as usual, for others it's not "a world war". Yet! So we should wait and see? Let's all sleep or be stupid for a while longer? Send more dirt into the air as the last hurrah of the coal industry? The proposed mobilization is not of the Army kind, yet. Although some of the soldiers were already deployed at the borders, and not just of US. It's mobilization of the economy, industry and government. The peaceful kind, for now. But just you wait a bit longer, and one will start turning into another, as is customary among humans incapable of turning a scientific prediction and intellectual vision into understanding that guides their collective action. We know who "loves uneducated people": those who want to keep them that way.
1
In fighting World War II most Americans were on board. They were emotionally involved. I was very small, back then, but I remember that one word was always covered with hate "JAP".
Today, its hard to get a majority of Americans behind anything. We have a White House that is trying to speed up the end of the world. To change that we have to concentrate first on winning the next election (thru courting independents and thinking Republicans). Step 2 will be to implement as much of a green program as possible.
As others have pointed out that might be too little too late. But we will just have to do different things, like investing in 3rd world countries.
3
''it would mean social upheaval...it also just might mean the survival of human civilization.''
No mights, buts, or maybes about it. Except maybe we might already be too late. In which case, the violence, censorship, curtailed freedoms, and other perils listed at the end of the article are nailed-down certainties. Climate change is a looming existential threat, not a nuisance we maybe can put up with for the sake of social harmony. The clock's ticking and the options are limited. It truly is time to mobilize.
1
Thank you for this edifying essay that reinforces the learned helplessness everyone is already incapacitated by.
The US is in a worse place than Europe to fight climate change.
Its much higher inequality stands in the way of basic measures that have long been taken in other advanced countries.
Take Low Emission Zones, for example. All major European cities have one, with a gliding path of stricter standards. It would be an easy way to defy Trump's war for more pollution.
But the much bigger poor part of America's population relies on beaters to get to work in the cities. They would be unfairly punished by a ban on polluting cars.
The same is true for increasing the price of main trash to spur more recycling, higher electricity end prices to subsidize solar, building codes that mandate more insulation etc.
Even on a more fundamental level, the need to do something for the environment is only really felt by those who don't have more urgent needs like food on the table, healthcare or a decent school for their children. As a result, the Green New Deal is highly controversial in the US and going nowhere soon whereas in Europe, often portrayed as a collection 28 bickering countries about to fall apart, the new EU commission leader Ursula von der Leyen trusted her VP to push through the European Green Deal. Only the Visegrád countries have pushed back but I suspect the controversial new EU commissioner for “Protecting the European Way of Life" was part of getting them on board.
3
Our species is faced with two existential threats: nuclear war and climate change. Ironically the solution to one could significantly help to address the other.
Total denuclearization would remove the nuclear threat and provide fuel for more carbon free nuclear power plants. The nuclear fuel would become available from dismantling bombs.
Then, the subject of nuclear waste disposal is brought up. Could rocket technology be perfected to the point where nuclear waste could be safely delivered to the sun? I think the answer is yes.
More carbon free electric power plants providing power for an all electric economy including electric vehicles might significantly improve the climate change outlook.
I am not a conspiracy guy, but for some reason over the last week or so there has been a glut of articles and opinion pieces debunking attempts to fight global warming. I have been told to not bother with plastic waste, give up on recycling, ditch the Tesla, etc. I know the history of world war ll. The enormous loss of life, the sacrifices, the dislocation. Global climate change has the potential to be even more catastrophic. It is the issue of our times. How we face it, or do not face it will define who we are and the future of the planet. Stop the soft defeatist language and vote for politicians who will take action. And do every small thing possible in your daily life. It feels good.
1
Anthropogenic climate change will have far reaching effects around the planet and will linger for hundreds of years. Entire coasts will be under water. Food chains will break down, arable land will diminish, and large areas will become uninhabitable. These climate change problems cannot be reversed after they are here in any kind of reasonable time frame.
It will take about 100 years to turn over the fossil fuel infrastructure toward new energy sources if the planet as whole started now. Unfortunately, the planet has done essentially nothing as fossil fuel consumption continues to increase. A few wind mills and solar panels have really done almost nothing to combat CO2 emissions. (something the “renewable” people fail to acknowledge). Eventually fossil fuels will go away anyhow as their viability of about 50 years actually be on the horizon fairly soon.
WWII was horrible on so many levels—but there were populations on the planet that did not feel that pain. Anthropogenic climate change will more devastating to large populations and the environment as no one will be spared some effect. It will just take longer for it to hit home…and that is the problem since humans don’t look to the future very well.
1
It has to be mentioned that we, even without climate change, are doomed to extinction. There will be a volcanic eruption or an asteroid that will make a life extinguishing cloud around earth. We likely will not at all be able to survive it.
One should not be surprised. The truth is that we are not a superior species because we have technology and large cerebral cortexes. Imagine no grid, no internet, no grocery store and you get the idea. A cockroach, an alligator has a chance because the needed environments are simpler and the strategies necessary are instinct and senses only, no elaborate co-dependencies at all. They did not go extinct, despite cataclysms of the past.
We have always been completely vulnerable, only our “good” books have created the fantasy that we are not destined for extinction. The bubble they create needs to burst. All religions that bespeak of supernatural saviors and the like should be removed from our culture as a step one.
Then maybe we could deflect an asteroid or even somehow vector a volcano using our technology and understanding. We could solve global warming too. The needed sea-change to become, for real, an immortal species is for a global leader to lead the world to that promised land we live upon but without illusions of people grandeur.
1
There is a clear enemy: big oil. Don’t be fooled by their rhetoric. They have enough resources to create their individual Green New Deals, yet they prefer to keep drilling for every last drop. Yes, Exxon is investing in new technology to control methane leaks. Yes, Shell is investing in renewables. However, these are irrelevant since their main business, which is heavily subsidized by our tax money, is to sell fossil fuels. Until they start selling alternative energy at decent prices, they are the enemy. Think of all the millions spent by the Koch brothers to keep public transportation bills from being funded in local elections all over this nation so that they can sell more to gas to cars. This is big oil in action.
1
Global annual greenhouse gas emissions are about 10 billion metric tons CO2-equivalent per year. The current cost of capture from power plants (the largest source) is ~$60/tonne.
At that price, assuming zero technological improvement ever, we could capture the entire global output of CO2 for $600 billion/year, or about half of what we spend on our military.
Global warming is fixable, at a price the United States alone could afford, if necessary, with technology that already exists. We don’t actually need mass mobilization on the scale of a global war. We could easily achieve it by repealing the Trump tax cuts and putting that money towards fixing the climate. That is what makes it so infuriating to read arguments like this, which in effect advance the denialist agenda by insisting that even trying to do something about global warming will inevitably cause massive financial and social upheaval.
If the entire world committed to spend just $2 trillion a year, which is ~2.5% of global GDP, to eliminate greenhouse gas sources and offset "legacy" emissions, we would end this problem forever in the space of a single generation.
3
The problem is that humans are selfish and lazy creatures. Unless they are actually worried enough or scared enough to get off their duffs and do something they will do nothing. We need people to be scared and worried so they start electing politicians who will do something about this potential catastrophe. We need them to be so concerned for their own lives and the sakes of their children that they work for change. If using the term “war” helps, fine by me.
The reality is that if we do nothing about climate change the result will most likely be “world war III.” There will be a horrible struggle for the dwindling and limited resources—the big ones—food, water, and stable climates where you can have shelter. Mass migrations and cruel brutality to acquire these resources will become the norm. Who cares what you call it now. Semantics have never mattered to the average person. We just need people to understand the seriousness of it all so we can do something. Whatever words accomplish that are the words we need to use.
2
So, we do all these climate change initiatives. What about the rest of the world? Doing "our" part really has little impact. Now if China did their part....
1
However much we may agree that mass mobilization to combat climate change is needed, I don’t believe anything on the scale required will happen absent a catalyzing catastrophe. Humanity will only change course when it hits a wall. Necessarily, chaos awaits in the future. There are far too many of us consuming far too many resources. The correction is as inexorable and inevitable as entropy itself. This view is not pessimistic, it’s realistic. Look around; the signs abound.
1
Many theories have been proposed as to why we've never seen evidence of advanced civilizations. I think we are staring it right in the face.
2
Let's not forget the population aspect of the problem. For many many generations we have judged our leaders by our economic growth, from small towns to states to the nation as a whole. We expect economic growth every year. We expect more jobs every month because we expect more people entering the job market every month.
More people means more pollution, means the problem is growing as we try to rein it in. There are many parts to the climate crisis and I think our innate belief that we always must grow will be one of the most difficult to overcome.
In a few years nature will begin to reverse that trend for us as the world gets hotter and the mass extinction get into full swing.
1
@Photomette loo
I think you left out a particular problem that is cow flatulence. As I understand the science Cow Flatulence is a major contributor to Methane Gas to the atmosphere. At first I thought that was a joke then I researched it and gosh it's real that's why meat less hamburgers are being rolled out, something most of us can do eat less beef.
The climate problem demands effective policy solutions on the national and international level. The world-is-ending, sky-is-falling rhetoric and propaganda is not going to help. The public needs level-headed, accurate information about the scientific, technological and economic details of the problems and solutions related to climate change. This should go hand-in-hand with commitment to and education about the UN's broader sustainable development goals (SDG). The bottom line is the need to transition from fossil fuels. Let's focus on that!
1
'How would we know when the “war on climate change” ends?'
Mankind stops burning fossil fuels and changes the practices of industrial agriculture, so sea temperatures stabilize and then decline. Doesnt seem too difficult to grasp.
"it would mean social upheaval, violence, censorship, curtailed freedoms, dubious compromises and radical changes in American culture and politics."
I agree, but if we do not undertake a full mobilization on climate change we will have far greater social upheaval, violence, censorship, curtailed freedoms, dubious compromises and radical changes in American culture and politics.
Our inaction on climate change in the past means that we face nothing but painful choices. My fear is that we will dither and up with disaster.
While I appreciate and respect the author's perspective on WWII, I agree with the lawmakers calling mobilization on that scale, because nothing less will help. We must act to save the planet, and we will need to sacrifice, just like in WWII. Hundreds of thousands are already being displaced, their lives and careers and education interrupted. There are refugees in camps across the world, and there has also been racially motivated violence.
Not long ago in this newspaper was an op-ed written about the burning Brazilian rain forest, which noted the "deforestation of Europe" had taken place centuries ago. The deforestation of Europe and also the US has contributed to climate change by removing vegetation that could help sequester carbon.
During the Great Depression, there was an effort made through the Civilian Conservation Corps to plant trees and create national forests. The public bought the seedlings and the C's planted them. It helped provide young men employment and helped bring back the land after drought.
Undertaking a great national - or international - movement to plant trees once again would help with carbon sequestration. This is just one kind of global initiative that could help slow the destruction of our planet.
Did the world survive Britain’s loss of dominance when gas replaced coal? Or on a less grand scale, the loss of buggy whip businesses when the car arrived?
Come on, people. Cut out the histrionics and do what we must do—shift our perspective. In this country, switching to green buildings and electric cars will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75%. Gee, sounds like an impossible task.
Then inventing and developing ways for emerging nations to bypass coal and massive adoption of gas cars just like they bypassed wired telephones—doesn’t sound impossible to me.
What needs to shift is how we view the problem. Glass half full or glass half empty. I get it. If I’m invested in coal/gas, this is going to force a change. But in 50 years, there will be a whole new class of energy companies making trillions off of humanities need to hold back entropy.
The author has little true understanding of this crisis.
Our crisis is not "how and whether human beings can live together sustainably."
Instead, our crisis is to reverse the mindset that humans have a more dominant right to this earth than wild nature.
To save ourselves, we must shed our arrogance and aggression.
5
The key to solving our problem is to shift everything from working against nature's creativity to learning from and working with nature. Regenerative Capitalism has figured this out both in theory and practice. So now we know what to do, that it works, and the old dichotomies of "jobs vs environment" and development vs environment no longer hold. Green jobs and green development are happening rapidly, and are better in every way than the old ways. It is a matter of scaling fast enough to mitigate the worst effects of the climate crisis.
1
Professor Scranton says that, during WWII, “nearly everyone saw himself caught up in an existential struggle for the future of the planet.” We’ll, that’s precisely how the struggle with climate change is understood by those he dismisses as not understanding their comparison with WWII: an existential struggle for the very survival of a planet that can sustain us. McKibbon couldn’t have said it any better. Perhaps it’s the good professor who fails to understand the current struggle.
3
I could never underestimate the horrors of WW II-having seen photos of the wounded men my father treated in the Pacific and knowing the horrors my mother's brother experienced as an infantryman in Italy and France. There was nothing glamorous about those fights.
But let's not underestimate the seriousness of what we're up against today. We're on course to wipe out virtually all life on earth, not just the mammals--us included--but everything. That's a pretty big deal.
3
Wars are understood in personal terms, personal sacrifice. That is why the G.I. Bill was such an effective thank you to the boys who fought and the women who backed them up. Henry Kissinger and George H. W. Bush were both educated on the G. I. Bill. It wasn't something they asked for, it was what a grateful country did.
The approach to climate change is abstract, not seen in personal terms. It's a science requiring sophistication and facility with math and numbers. There is no immediacy to spur action. Policy makers say 20 years, 40 years, next century. They use Celsius instead of Fahrenheit like American weather forecasters do. We confuse centimeters with inches. We don't speak the same language. Collapsing fjords win best photo contests. Flying in the eye of a hurricane sounds like something cool to do. Every flooded street looks the same and the stories of loss of property similar and sad, but they didn't happen where I live.
I don't live in a Mississippi River flood zone or a California forest village. Who approved the building of all emergency facilities in Berkeley and Oakland to be build on the fault line? Hospitals, fire departments, police stations all sitting there waiting for the evening news asking that question when the Big One comes.
As long as they bring sand to the beach each year, what does a little encroachment of the sea matter.
We need a new way to talk about climate change, a language of emotion that makes the problem up close and personal.
1
It's not a mobilization of the industrial world against itself. It's just a transition from oil to other forms of energy. A big deal given the size of the investments, but not so big in the sense that these kinds of transformations (such as wind to coal, coal to oil) have happened before.
1
if we do not decide now to make large changes, then we will have no control when waves of drought, famine, and climate refugees sweep the world. We Must mobalise against the enemy (clearly fossil fuels and the companies that pedal and support them) toward the goal of a carbon neutral economy, with incentives to move the atmosphere into negative trends.
Why harp on the distinctions between war and action toward climate stability when the challenges of the later are at least as great and the consequences potentially MORE dire for humanity?
4
The US, like most of the world, has become so Balkanized, with no common culture, ethnicity, language, education, values and on and on, that we share almost no common goals except to make money. The left keeps telling us this is what makes us stronger, but the reality is the opposite. People you share nothing with, are people you're not going to have common cause with. We've diversified ourselves to the point that it's almost impossible to make appeals that have a universal audience.
1
Climate change is not world war?
Tell that to the people suffering and dying because of it.
I don't think they would agree.
2
Interesting perspective, by based on a totally false premise. 21st century America knows nothing about "total war" -- it's closest experience was 150 years ago. And to apply that phrase to the American effort in World War II is to show a stunning ignorance of anything happening outside of the United States. If the United States experienced "total war", then how does one characterize the experiences of Britain or the Soviet Union, where the lives of those individuals were affected in ways far more invasive than anything experienced in North America. And even within North America, we Canadians were far more affected by the experience of our six (as opposed to less than four) years of war than were our American cousins. A quick look at the relative casualty rates is enough to prove that.
1
The roots of climate change and environmental degradation lie in the internal conflicts within the 1%. These conflicts are first over control and dominance of the ownership of wealth and second over short-term maximization of income. As the technologies for war; resource extraction and exploitation; and control of the 99% all evolved over time, the geographic scale of the dominance struggle expanded until today it is global. The actual climate/environmental “war” taking place today is a global struggle among the 1%.
The most dominant of the 1% have little, or are devoid of, empathy for other humans or for the Earth and her creatures. Since the 1% seek short-term optimizations of their positions (despite claims to religion, patriotism, etc.) within their inevitably limited lifetimes, and since they now possess global-reach technologies, the novel historical phenomenon we and our children and the Earth are caught up in as bystanders and victims is in fact WW III.
1
With all due respect to the author, we are already living in a time of "rage, fear, grief and social disorder."
"and nearly everyone saw himself caught up in an existential struggle for the future of the planet." Buddy, if all of us don't start looking at climate change as an existential struggle, planet Earth is going to make blitzkreig look like a pop warner football game.
3
Climate change is a lot of skirmishes. Just two examples. Power utilities are working at the state level to impede homeowners from installing solar panels on their roofs. Big money is lobbying to undermine electric car production.
Profits will always be more important than anything else.
2
Mr. Scranton is a better historian than I. But he knows nothing about climate. It's getting warmer, about a degree C (1.8 F) over the last 150 years. It will continue to do so. The cause is mostly or entirely anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases.
So what? There is no "ecological collapse". Agricultural productivity is increasing (probably not because of climate change, but climate change is not reducing it). Glaciers are shrinking (a benefit to those who use melt-water to irrigate their crops, though that won't last forever). Sea level is rising, by about a foot per century. That's a problem in some low-lying coastal areas, so infrastructure will gradually move uphill. A foot, or perhaps a few feet (if sea level rise accelerates) per century. Rainfall is slowly increasing, probably a benefit for agriculture.
Civilization adapted to past natural climate change (Medieval Maximum, Little Ice Age), and will adapt to anthropogenic climate change.
Proclaiming doom and demanding extraordinary powers to deal with it is the tactic of demagogues.
1
@Jonathan Katz
We are filling the oceans with plastic. A million (at least) species are on the verge of extinction. Most humans live on the coasts-which are slowly disappearing. The very systems we all depend on for life are being stressed if not destroyed, yet we add over 80 million extra humans a year, driving immigration to the point of destabilizing the west, the only stable democracies. Besides the obvious reason that who wants to live in this "brave new world", does anyone think this can go on?
1
@Jonathan Katz Jonathan, it's very wealthy-liberal of you to blithely believe in painless adaptation. And you are absolutely correct that power-hungry wannabes often cry "disaster!"
But you also know that only a fool takes this lesson in order to ignore true disaster. The "increased rain" you speak of increasingly falls in torrents of floods and supercharged storms alternating with years of desertification. Work is becoming deadly outdoors in the tropics and even in the U.S. (although not in your air-conditioned office). Mass shifts in food productivity will jump-start unprecedented global migrations including, one assumes, to your own neighborhood. And so on: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html
Many of the world's poor will lose everything they have, down to their children's lives. You are probably right, however, that the wealthiest will make trivial "adjustments" and be just fine. Odd that this is your threshold for civilization.
“There is no clear enemy to mobilize against...” I beg to differ. The mass, large-scale emission of greenhouse gases IS the enemy. It is the overwhelming problem and cause of climate change. How do we mobilize against it?
5
@Adria Carey Perez
The "enemy" to mobilize against is the unsustainable, slow suicide of ourselves and nature, that we and the economy and our over population we have allowed to occur, are giving us. Not only is what we are encouraging by our birth rate and growth at any cost lifestyle going to destroy us, who wants to live in that world?
I don't understand the point of this article -- that the metaphor for national mobilization is imprecise? or historically inaccurate? Well, yes, the costumes have changed, but the imperative is the same: survival.
I agree with every comment here that national and global social disorder is already upon us, that fear, chaos, mass migration, and military threat are already upending the world we thought we knew. They will only accelerate.
After debunking the comparison to WWII, the author then contends that an even larger transformation is mandatory if we are to meet this challenge. There is no metaphor adequate to the task. At least national wartime mobilization is an idea people can understand and patriotically embrace.
5
There is a clear enemy when it comes to climate change, and the author (after denying its existence) names that enemy: carbon fueled capitalism, and all those who strive to keep it unchecked. In particular, at this moment, the biggest enemy is Mr. Trump and his newly remade Republican Party who are doing everything possible to promote the most destructive forms of that capitalism. Mr. Scranton is correct, of course, that the threat of climate change is nothing like WWII, but that misses the important point others are seeking make: If we don't mobilize on the scale of the WWII efforts soon, then the long-term economic and geographical dislocations that result from climate change will dwarf the scale of the threat we ever faced in WWII. Even had the world become a totalitarian state at the end of WWII, we would have had a planet that was livable and that allowed for human story to continue, albeit with the arc of history that eventually bends toward justice becoming longer still. Without leaders who have, and who act upon, a real sense of urgency on climate change, it is far from guaranteed that we will have a planet that can sustain anything like our current population, let alone support the flourishing of liberal democracy.
10
"Nevertheless, total mobilization may be our only hope. Ecological collapse is happening all around us." Exactly. I would change "may be" to "is." Trump is leading the world to catastrophe. One of these Democratic candidates has to make combating climate change the number one priority for this country and has to find a way to sell it to American voters. Maybe they could adopt Republican fear tactics. Something like "Republicans wants to take away your ability to breathe, to eat, to have children who survive to adulthood." Maybe that would work. Jobs, education, social justice, income inequality, health care - all incredibly important issues. But at the end of the day, none of it matters if the planet is uninhabitable. My twelve year old believes that the planet is dying and that she will experience the effects of that when she is a young adult. And she has science on her side. How do I respond to that? "Oh, honey, smart people will come up with a way around it. Don't worry"? Smart people - scientists, CEOS, politicians, voters, consumers - all need to work together to change the status quo. which is killing life on our planet.
5
I'm sure the good professor means well, but the argument he makes is basically semantic. And the result of NOT mobilizing "as if we are at war" will be similar to the social disruption that accompanied World War II. Or even worse: humankind could actually be wiped out, along with a million other species.
4
“There is no clear enemy to mobilize against”
I would contend that there are several clear and easily identified enemies:
The oil companies, including the ones who knew the climate was threatened by their product but kept it secret.
Corporate America generally, since they simply can’t conceive of any emergency for which they would jeopardize their profits.
The corporate media that has downplayed the risk, controlled as they are, by corporate America.
The establishment intellects, pundits, think tank drones, all busy trying, like the author of this article, to prevent any meaningful action to address this existential issue.
8
Hey if climate change is a war, call me a conscientious objector. I can't in good conscience demand that we dismantle and destroy our economy to solve what may be a nonexistent problem. I refuse to obey the orders of people like Bernie Sanders and AOC an Al Gore and Leo who don't have any understanding of science but desperately want to spend everyone else's money. I refuse to join a movement where it's cool to let 1.1 million kids out of school to protest about something they've been brainwashed into believing.
I refuse to march to the drumbeat of alarmists who chant that the science is settled and degrade and humiliate any who disagree with them. I refrain from fighting any and all religious wars and alarmis is certainly a religion.
I refuse to march for social justice generals whose real agenda is not solving climate change but social engineering and wealth redistribution.
I will not fight alongside those who haven't bothered to investigate the scientific evidence that purports to show that we are abnormally warming.
And I refuse to serve in a nonmilitary position such as figuring ways on how to redistribute wealth which is the real objective here.
So where do I go, Canada?
1
I got it. I’ve got mine, so who cares what the consequences are to everyone else?
"First, climate change is not a war. There is no clear enemy to mobilize against, and thus no way to ignite the kind of hatred that moved Americans against Japan during World War II."
The last paragraph notwithstanding, the author's position is hopelessly naive. Climate change IS going to be a war; there will be fights for water (get ready, Great Lakes); dislocation of populations due to rising seas, drought and torrential rains. We are already seeing rising hatreds and tribalism--look at how immigrants (who are feeling the drought consequences first in the N. Triangle and Syria) are treated and vilified.
We are in 1937-38 rather than 1941. It is all rolling downhill towards us, gathering speed. Maybe the correct frame to look at it isn't war, although I think the mobilization will need to be on that scale, but the Marshall Plan. Framing it positively or negatively, over the coming two decades much of what we know will be changed forever.
4
We're already getting a taste of the transformations that must inevitably happen, with the Trump retreat on auto emissions and the useless attempt to revoke the California emissions waiver.
As those efforts wind their way through the court system toward inevitable loss, transportation will continue to electrify. In the end, electrification will remake the entire automotive ecosystem as we know it, from the factories, to the workers, to the dealers, to the suppliers, to the insurance underwriters, and to the regulators. We will replace the gas tax with a vehicle-miles-travelled system, we will reform building codes so that car chargers are as common at home as air conditioners, the oil industry will greatly shrink to supply primarily non-gasoline petrochemicals, and public sector investment will shift from fossil fuels to electric utilities.
The important thing is not to panic about what will be lost, but to anticipate and celebrate what we will gain. Dr. Scranton missed the essential point, that at the end of the turmoil and disruption he described was a reward. We won't just go willy-nilly into a black hole. We will transform our economy into what we know we need it to be to preserve our civilization.
2
What he said! And one step further. A cooperative international scientific effort to develop sustainable non-polluting energy sources along with carbon capture technologies. Aggressively develop fossil fuel alternatives. Offer a billion dollar prize for a viable solution. We are not helpless and all is not hopeless.
A consequential and important piece in the ongoing dual crises of climate change and ecological overshoot discussion. Unfortunately it has been just that - a discussion without globally meaningful, immediate action.
Ultimately, solving the Climate Crisis requires giant sacrifice by all people in every country immediately. It means wiping our brain hard drives clean and living an entirely new daily reality which is the polar opposite of the quality of life currently enjoyed in the developed world.
"Judging from what happened in World War II, it would mean social upheaval, violence, censorship, curtailed freedoms, dubious compromises and radical changes in American culture and politics. Yet it also just might mean the survival of human civilization."
We can keep doing our climate crisis-oblivious daily routine leading right into human species extinction or we can vigorously support the massive, life altering mobilization that it requires avoid our species extinction.
2
The author asks "How would we know when the 'war on climate change' ends?" This is not an abstract struggle. There are objective metrics. When we drop back down below 350 PPM atmospheric CO2, and remain there, that is our objective. War may not be the appropriate metaphor, but there our goal is clear.
3
"transformations required to address climate change would have real economic losers"
This seems to be the concern holding back our 'leaders', the oligarchs whose fortunes power the political winds of the world.
It is a petty concern in light of the forecasted misery and perhaps extinction of the human race (along with many other forms of life) that will occur without massive effort such as the Green New Deal.
2
A much more accurate analogy, and one almost necessary for achieving any lasting environmental sustainability, would be mobilizing to eliminate organized crime around the world.
Solving either problem would require both public and corporate resources and policy changes paired with widespread willpower and cultural changes around much of the globe.
For an English professor you have a shockingly remedial understanding of symbol and metaphor. By talking about a present crisis using the language of previous crises, we tap into a collective spirit of commonality, cooperation and shared mission. Saying that we want a WWII-style mobilization to address the climate change crisis means that we are taking seriously the fact that actually doing something about this mess will require completely remaking our civilization, as we did in WWII. It does not mean that we'll be fighting greenhouse gases with B-17s. And your description of the earlier era as one of "rage, fear, grief and social disorder," well, that sounds an awful lot like another spatio-temporal moment that we have some familiarity with. Yes, this problem is much bigger than WWII and will require an even greater wholesale reconfiguration of how we live. That doesn't mean that those employing the metaphor are naive about the significance of either WWII or climate change or think that there is some cosmic equivalence between the two. Your argument is so specious that it feels disingenuous and leads me to ask a wholly genuine question: what are you really about?
32
@David Ford
I believe Mr. Scranton, in his attempts to create an audience, likes to toss incendiaries and watch them explode. His "We're Doomed, Now What?" is as facile as the title sounds. After his academic career ends, he'll be scribbling for Breitbart.
But don't take my opinion. Jedediah Britton-Purdy in "After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene" states that Scranton isn't worth reading.
What is Scranton about? I commend his books, which have been praise by Naomi Klein and other important writers on climate change.
I do not find the distinctions Dr. Scranton draws sufficient to uphold the central argument of this piece. Comparisons to the mobilization needed to address climate change and those seen in this country during World War II are apt. This does not disregard the suffering seen at that time, but rather underscores the impact, upheaval and destruction that we now face. Our civilization is indeed experiencing “rage, fear, grief and social disorder.” The rate, scale and severity of those sentiments will only continue to accelerate given our trajectory. Radical change is needed. We are all stakeholders in this change. There is an enemy: a future of preventable death and destruction on a scale our species has never witnessed. Victory can be ascertained by the extent of global carbon emissions, the amount of carbon in our atmosphere and the degree to which we are willing to collaborate as a collective global population.
7
We need new metaphors.
While the historical analysis about WWII is interesting and well stated, the most significant part of the article is the last paragraph.
After millennia of orientation towards the metaphor of struggle-as-war, humanity must re-imagine our relationships to each other and to the ecological systems that support us and all other life forms on the planet. We must foster the collaborative skills that it will take to build new ways of relating to each other across geographical and cultural differences. Sure, acknowledge the fear, but fear and hate won't get us where we need to be in 100 years.
The transformation of global culture is coming one way or another! Let's let go of the old metaphors and go for a future we would want our kids to enjoy!
"Such a program would be another order of magnitude larger and more complex than America’s military mobilization during World War II. The problem of climate change is bigger than the New Deal. It’s bigger than the Great Depression. It’s bigger than war. The problem of climate change is the problem of how and whether human beings can live together sustainably on this planet."
A great paragraph from a great writer and thinker. It can't just be a government solution. The majority of Americans on the left AND right are not prepared to do what it takes and only some of them seem to understand what the future threatens if things keep going the way they are. This is a country that has a problem when asked simply to cut down on eating meat. No one wants to even talk about what our appetite for meat has turned us into in this country, what we are doing to animals and the environment to satisfy it. America has its roots in entitlement. It was FOUNDED on it: Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That last part? That means: sell, by, consume. Sell, buy, consume. Do you ever notice how much plastic comes off everything we bring home to eat? We use it in a minute and it stays here for 500 years. We're doomed, now what.
Humans are, by nature, an invasive species. As such, we likely won't be stopped until nature stops us.
I argue for any democrat because at least we can put a plug in the drain. For now.
6
Donald Trump won't work to resist climate change, and he is doing all he can to prolong the carbon-based economy beyond what should be its date of extinction, or at least sharp curtailment.
However, Trump is conducting a war on immigration using every resource at his command. He is redirecting our military from normal training and security tasks to helping with border blockage. He is diverting funds to restore and upgrade military facilities, including bases that suffered hurricane damage, to build a few chunks of his Wailing Wall. And Trump stands quite ready to divert funding from needed social programs like Medicaid to his wall project. The U.S. badly needs an infrastructure program for bridges and highways, but all the money is going to the wall.
The bonfire of Trump's vanity is blazing bright as the days grow darker for the dreams of America.
1
Transitioning to clean energy is a big part of what must be done to fight climate change. It's absolutely necessary but pretty certainly insufficient to avoid the worst dangers threatened by climate disruption. There are losers -- the fossil fuel industry and some investor owned utilities -- but the rest of us including industry and finance will gain. And, the ordinary consumer will win too if we can get the transition process out of the hands of the financial industry. It will result in lower costs of energy, less environmentally determined illness, and lower health care costs and that will enrich all of us. Done thoughtfully we can all benefit even those whose wealth is wrapped up in fossil fuels. Who wants to be rich in a dying society? It is daunting -- transforming energy, electrifying everything, reinventing agriculture, transforming transportation and industry -- but learning how to live sustainably will be a crowning achievement of this century. Information technology makes it possible if not easy.
1
Regarding WWII, Mr. Scranton states "...nearly everyone saw himself caught up in an existential struggle for the future of the planet". That last word is the wrong word for it is only now that those who espouse a "Green New Deal" are caught up in an existential struggle for the future of most of the species on the planet, not just the political climate of Nations and peoples.
As we are now heading, It is inevitable there will be a great loss of habitable land mass and a great migration of climate refugees that will dwarf anything in recorded history. The cost of not taking massive corrective action will be far higher and far more disruptive to the human population and a large number of species than will result from taking massive corrective action.
I believe references to FDR's New Deal and to the rebuilding of Europe through the Marshall Plan are proper minimal references for the level of action needed to be taken. I believe sacrifice by the existing humans is minimal necessary action in order to leave our Earth habitable to a level near what exists.
Simply put, what kind of World do we want to exist in 30 or 70 years? What action must be taken to ensure a reasonably habitable Planet?
This is not a "Chinese Hoax", and fracking shale gas, investing in massive new fossil fuel infrastructure so we may continue to expand and burn is a bridge only towards the end of our line.
Seeing that you are an English professor, it is odd to me that you willfully disregard the usefulness of the metaphor of mobilization. You opt instead to extend the metaphor away from "let's do something meaningful on a grand scale not seen since the Greatest Generation" to include the hardship of WWII for the bulk of your article. As a history lesson, this is fine; but as a measure of aspirational politics, you bury the lead until the end with your lukewarm "it just might mean the survival of human civilization." I'm not sure I understand the value of the extension when we have yet to get our country to fully agree to even tackle the challenge. Yes, FDR laid the groundwork behind the scenes but he also primed the public with rhetoric like what we're seeing from AOC, Gore, and McKibben.
2
I'm reminded of those overloaded ferrys and busses you see in places in the developing world. Proceeding slowly and unsteady listing to one side - then they capsize. Survivors recount how some were terrified and some totally surprised anything could go wrong. Us?
1
I think the author is wrong. Climate change is every bit an existential threat to all of humanity that WWII was, and more. This is our only planet, and if we render it uninhabitable for human beings (I'm sure the cockroaches will survive), there is no greater calamity. And it will require all of the retooling and sacrifice and much, much more to deal with than WWII did. I don't take anything away from the sacrifices made by the veterans of WWII (my father was one of them), but this is on a larger scale. We have waited too long, meaning the fix will be that much harder and require international coordination on a level never seen before. If we fail, the consequences are death and destruction that will dwarf that of WWII.
3
Well, a toe in the water at least -- but will we be preserving nations or the species? Large economies (and their societies) will survive only if their supply chains can be maintained. Looks like we have to aim to save the species and not just nations.
1
It is right that the climate crisis is not the same as WWII, nor is it the Great Depression that lead to the original New Deal programs. As the author points out, however, it's on a similar scale and magnitude: a global, existential threat.
The idea of mobilization need not be literally the same, then, but the aspirational idea cannot be so easily dismissed. If we are able to unify as a nation to understand and visualize the threat, we can lead the world towards positive and rational response towards vanquishing a shared enemy.
This enemy is not human, and our war need not use bullets and bombs. We needn't vilify Exxon and others whose profits arise from fossil energy, rather we should be able to enroll them as participants in the solution. This is not a red or blue problem, yet somehow we have cast it as political.
I see mobilization as the force that finally brings our fractured and bruised country back together to fight a common enemy. Perhaps learning from the past we can avoid the many horrors the author describes if we act before it's too late.
If we continue to dither, however, we'll lose our chance to take action and revert to desperate reaction.
Is it so naive to hope that we can avoid horrific human suffering?
2
A thoughtful, reasonable article, but it misses one main point. Climate Change will most likely result in an actual World War. It is estimated that huge swaths of the Earth will become literally uninhabitable in the next 30 years, starting now. This will cause those nations--people, armies, etc.--to attempt to physically relocate towards the poles--and why wouldn't they? The problem is, there isn't room for them, physically or culturally. It will be very ugly. A small version of this is playing out on the southern U.S. border. Many Central Americans are fleeing not just because of violence, but because the climate has gotten too hot to grow food. This will seem quaint in 20 years. Climate Change is, in a very real sense, the *only* real problem. Everything else progressives are arguing about is a footnote.
11
On the point that a “war on climate change” does not present an enemy or a victory, what about “the war on terror”?
Before stating that “climate change is not a war,” it would have been curious to consider the many ways in which climate change is a war against ourselves. One backed by decades of politicians choosing to overlook science for the sake of profit and national prosperity.
In short, The author misses a central aspect behind the comparison between war efforts and the current climate crisis. The analogy used by advocates of the Green New Deal says: if we have “mobilized” once to meet our needs, and done so successfully, we can and must do it one more.
3
Living green seems like a cleaner, healthier, less cumbersome lifestyle. What’s there not to like? Missing all that time pumping gas? Petroleum in the ground is like money in the bank. A thousand years from now, people will be using products made from petroleum. In the mean time we can breathe air that is cleaner and have less noise pollution from vehicles. Anyone with talent in the petroleum industry will find other good employment quickly enough. The good thing is that we have advanced solar, wind and other green technologies so that we can immediately make changes. The challenge can be fun. We can envision sustainable and beautiful environments to improve our quality of life.
2
well, at least the English professor who authored this op-ed has some points right. The climate alarmists among us know as much about history as they do science. Na Da. But it feels so virtuous doesn't it, to be so concerned about mommy earth.
The alarmists are more concerned about social justice than the are about understanding what, if anything, is going on. If you ask anyone of them what has the greatest effect on the earth's climate what answer would you expect? Fossil fuels.
1
@Ralphie
And they would be right, because fossil fuels in the current context are the only thing that could be causing the rapid changes we are seeing. All the answers given by the oil industry and okie-phenokee politicians like Inouffe and even claims by the few scientists denying climate change (all of whom I might add are getting funding from the fossil fuel industry) don't hold up, solar radiation has been measured since the late 50's and hasn't increased in any significant way, and while the earth is in a warming period after an ice age, the rate of change in global temperature during a warming period is steady, the acceleration we are seeing is not part of any natural cycle. On the other hand, atmospheric CO2 is increasing at a rapid rate and it is very easy in a lab to prove that CO2 causes heat to be trapped; also, Methane is even more of a greenhouse gas, and besides being released with fossil fuel production and from the gastric track of animals, also is being released in quantities as permafrost melts rapidly.
But hey, I know, God is gonna make it alright, Jesus is gonna come back, all the evil liberals will be wiped off the planet and good Christians will be able to drive around in gas guzzling SUVs, eat a lot of meat, smoke, drink, sit on the sofa like couch potatoes after the rapture and be perfectly healthy.....
I'm old enough to remember my family's Victory Garden during WW II. The response to climate change requires international actions that I doubt will happen until it is too late.
There have been two great trends leading to the current problem. The industrial age brought a shift from work based on muscle, wind and water power to fossil based steam and then electrical energy. "Progress" meant generating more goods with less manpower thanks to the burning of fossil fuels which put CO2 into the atmosphere.
Medical advances have reduced child mortality and extended human lifetimes to the current levels. Each of us has basic needs: food, clean water and shelter in addition to opportunities for education and work to support ourselves.
The ever growing population on our planet is stretching its ability to satisfy these needs. Arable land is being lost and aquifers are being drained at an unsustainable rate. Forests are being cut down. Replacing coal with natural gas only marginally reduces the volume of greenhouse gasses that are emitted.
WW II required the mobilization of many countries, not only the US, to defeat a worldwide existential threat. Climate change is such a threat. It is causing droughts that result in mass migrations across nations which creates anger, resentment, and repression.
Nature addresses excess populations of animals with ways to reduce them. In our case, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" will ride and all will suffer. Wait and see!
1
I think the comparison of mobilization during WW II is an excellent model for gearing up for a battle against climate change. The author clearly describes how our country's leaders responded to the existential dangers facing our nation and understood that protecting our nation would require sacrifices by most American citizens, whose lives were frequently uprooted.
A similar challenge faces our country if we are to deal effectively with the incremental and destructive effects of climate change. The carbon polluting industries will have to find ways to profoundly curtail their carbon emissions or close up shop, leaving tens of workers unemployed. These workers will need the support of government to retool their skills and offer educational programs to shepherd them into new jobs as we did for returning soldiers after World War II.
In my opinion, these suggestions and others promulgated by climate scientists will die on the vine unless there is strong governmental leadership that acknowledges the reality of long-term dangers to humanity and promotes the required financial support necessary for programs like the Green New Deal. However, Pres. Trump not only denies the reality of climate change but actively seeks to further destroy the environment by opening up logging in pristine forests, turning back California's emissions requirements for cars, undoing protections for the most vulnerable animals, just to name a few of examples his blatant disregard for the climate.
3
America mobilized to ward off an existential threat that if left unchecked would have impacted their lives directly within a few years. There were also 100s of 1000s if allies dying as a direct result. People were also far more naive so could respond more directly to propaganda. For many in North America the worries about climate change seem very much overblown as day to day life has barely been affected. I think we're going to need to see real devastation in heavily developed societies before anything starts to change. the rich people are buying all the junk and living in the giant houses afterall.
2
And as clear as all this seems to us, the current occupant of the White House is fighting to deny California its right to determine its own climate policy.
When did Republicans turn so harshly against states' rights?
1
There is absolutely no chance that the governments of this planet will ever make the necessary changes needed to significantly reduce, never mind eliminate, the ecological threat. There are too many emerging nations/economies in much of the world (E.G. India, China, Africa), and asking them to halt their economic growth for the good of the overall planet will certainly fall on deaf ears. Look at the current situation of Brazil and the rain forest.
Actions will not be taken until emerging nations complete industrialization--and even then, it will be in baby steps. No real action will be taken until it is much too late. The action taken at that late date will be for basic survival.
Our only real hope will be through science. A method needs to be found to remove the carbon from the ozone--to eliminate the greenhouse effect without nations reducing their emissions. Or to remove carbon from our emissions, without it being at significant $ cost in money and labor. This all sounds like a pipe dream, but it may be obtainable, and unfortunately, it may be our only means of avoiding self-destruction. Science is our only reasonable hope.
149
@Billy from Brooklyn I completely agree. People will let the world burn to benefit themselves. So, let's concentrate on what we actually can do: innovate.
25
@Billy from Brooklyn
Agree also and note that there are forces that actually want this climate change to open seaways in the artic and melt the icecaps to get at resources. Clearly defined scientific objectives and the willingness to sacrifice resources to achieve them are essential. Other steps are futile.
12
@Billy from Brooklyn The UK managed to cut their carbon emissions by 44% since 1990 without eliminating growth. The idea that you have to choose between growth and fighting climate change is a false duality.
You know what it costs per capita to go eliminate the climate crisis? About the same as your monthly cell phone bill: $25-$60/month in carbon fees, paid primarily by the companies emitting heavy amounts of greenhouse gases. Most of the revenue would be distributed to citizens as a dividend to offset any small cost-of-goods increases.
That's tiny, for an industrialized nation. It speaks volumes that we aren't willing to take that simple measure -- which both climate scientists and economists agree is simple and effective.
57
More matter with less art. The details of WWII don't matter, what matters is, as this piece finally arrives at, that this is an existential crisis and solving it will require sacrifice, some of which may feel unfair, and be disruptive. Not nearly so much, however, as not addressing it. There is no comfortable solution.
5
@Frank While there is no comfortable solution, I take issue with the author's comment on "to stabilize the earth's climate", there is no stabilizing the climate and there was no stabilizing it 30 years ago, but we can slow down the rate of change (less carbon pollution) and support adaptation (animal migration corridors, accepting of climate refugees, taking rising sea levels into consideration in coastal development planning).
2
I don't think any progressive is saying that fighting climate change is exactly like fighting a war. I think the progressives' point is merely that the scale of the problem is huge and that we need to mobilize with intensity, as we did during the Great Depression and WWII.
The author is right that climate change (or, more accurately, environmental degradation, as the problem is larger than just climate change) is a massive challenge even larger than those we faced in the 1930s and 40s. And it is a global problem, so it can't be addressed merely on a national scale.
What I'm not sure Americans understand well is that actually solving our environmental problems will mean a massive restructuring of our economic system—not just in the US, but globally. This is why the economic and social justice parts of the Green New Deal are absolutely integral to the entire plan. Our environmental crisis cannot be resolved without a radical change in our economy—and that cannot be accomplished without addressing the economic and social impact on people whose lives will be greatly disrupted by the required change.
I am not sure whether people around the globe can unite behind a desperately needed Global Green New Deal (GGND). It seems beyond the capability of humanity, wired as we are to put short-term self-interest above longer-term collective interest. But if we fail to implement a GGND, the consequences will be devastating, as nature has her own ways of solving the problem.
257
@617to416
Thankfully, none of our political parties can unite around it either. A national solution to an global problem is not going to work, especially when it is a thinly-disguised money grab.
If one wants to sacrifice for the environment, other s may see it as noble and be tempted to pitch in. When some people seek to enrich themselves off the suffering and guilt of others (or of the natural world) people see through it quickly and want nothing to do with it.
3
@Alan
I don't fear our species' extinction as much as I fear the journey toward extinction. Death will come as a relief after the famine, war, and social collapse that will grace our path to oblivion.
26
@617to416I think we are supported--by media and a short term culture--to think short term. But what DID seem to work during WWII was the will to give up stockings, have victor gardens etc. The author leaves out all the cooperative moves that also happened during that time. Important to be realistic but not to lose site of our imagination and will for working together when it's important to our survival that we do so.
7
The best analogy between them both is that we cannot do this alone. It is going top take world wide unity of purpose. That's harder than killing one another.
168
@USNA73
Yes, it will take world-wide unity of purpose, but humanity will NOT be up to the challenge. The tragedy of the commons has shown time and again that self-interest rather than global purpose will defeat any meaningful effort to reverse the earth's current climate trajectory. It's sad and I wish I could be more hopeful.
20
@USNA73 Did we need worldwide unity to create the oil and gas industries? No, we just need a problem that people will pay to resolve and the markets will find solutions, so long as central planners don't mess it up (like when they pretty much killed off nuclear power over fear-mongering and the "wisdom of children").
1
@USNA73,
Sure we can. In fact, if we start building CO2 recovery plants to capture and eliminate CO2 others will follow. Do you really think the Chinese People's Party will survive long if the pollution they're producing, that is killing its people, isn't dealt with soon? I don't think so.
America still leads the world. So, let's lead.
"...requires real priorities, compromise, and sacrifices." And therein lies the source of my pessimism. Try we must, for to do otherwise is a mortal sin, a crime against nature and the planet. But, tragically, it just isn't human nature to sacrifice to the extent necessary at this point. We are several decades too late, and since 2016 we are speeding in exactly the wrong direction.
5
We’ve had so many chances to elect leaders that would have pulled us back from the climate abyss, but every time we stand there watching our house burning and thinking it’s okay watch the fire raging around us. Hanging chads ring a bell?
It will take mass mobilization that requires our government to move beyond its greed and utter insistence on erasing one man’s legacy and punishing states that choose to protect the health of their people.
As for the social upheaval mentioned in this article? We’re living it, with or without admitting that climate change is driving many of those forces.
202
@PGHplayball you are exactly right. Problem is those in positions of political leadership at present, "can't handle the truth."
15
@PGHplayball What social upheaval do you see? Few of us feel any negative effects yet. In fact, most of the costs of storms/fire damage is precisely because government intervenes in insurance (providing it when others wouldn't) and nuclear power (used fear to trick us into burning far more coal and oil and gas for the past 50 years).
Between any two processes there will be similarities and differences. The advocates of the Green New Deal are referring to scope of mobilization when making comparisons to the New Deal and the WWII effort. We do not trivialize the horrors of combat that our troops and those of our allies underwent. Here are some key quotes from this article's description of WWII:
"nearly everyone saw himself caught up in an existential struggle for the future of the planet"
"entire industries were retooled"
"more than 30 million Americans were uprooted from their homes and migrated across the country"
"the material culture of American life was transformed beyond imagining: food production, housewares, automobiles, home building, highways, television, film, clothing, travel and music all underwent phenomenal metamorphoses"
I believe that each of these applies to what will be necessary in the effort to mitigate and reduce Climate Catastrophe.
And yes, this is not something the USA can do alone-- any more that it could have defeated the Axis rattlesnakes alone. But as in WWII, perhaps even more so, the USA has a vital role to play.
282
Yes, a successful fight against climate change “...would mean social upheaval, violence, censorship, curtailed freedoms, dubious compromises and radical changes in American culture and politics .” If it is not fought the outcome will almost certainly be far worse than the mere loss of human civilization. Mass extinction is already underway. Humans are highly adaptable, generalist omnivores, which gives us a certain advantage. But we tend to forget that we depend on less adaptable life, including our own highly vulnerable man-made mono-cultures, for survival. We have no choice.
131
@syfredrick,
And just to highlight one particular point that is easily overlooked:
A mass extinction is already underway.
7
@syfredrick
We have no choice, because we actually are obliged, because of our advantages.
I am not religious. But, I do not understand how what is happening, right now, is not seen as exactly what is portrayed by Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden, and for the same reason.
3
@syfredrick and I don't think we need to assume violence etc. We also are hardwired to cooperate and love and be compassionate and we can take the high road when survival is at stake!
1
I’m less concerned about politicians using aspirational language than I am about the planet my children are going to inherent. The coming generation has already experienced fear and lost economic opportunity; they know what’s coming in a hotter world. Which really isn’t that far away from the World War II generation.
219
The bumper economy after WWII and the military-industrial complex helped fuel climate change, so it seems ironic to use war mobilization as a vision to fight climate change. But, like the war years, ordinary citizens and corporations will have to be givers and not takers to help people survive the effects of climate change.
5
I am not sure the author is clear on what climate change will really mean.
Close to 300 million people will be displaced by sea level rise by 2100. This includes 17 million in Shanghai, 5 million in Osaka, 2.7 million in Miami, and 2.5 million around The Hague. Swaths of Africa, Central America, and Asia will become unsuitable to agriculture and, in some cases, habitation. Water will become dramatically scarce in many parts of the world. The resulting migration pressure alone will be of a scale the world has never seen before, with social collapse and wars in tow.
The needed mobilization will be different than in WW2. Then, the mobilization was comprehensive but spurred by easily understood dangers that were immediate and pressing. The effects of climate change will be creeping. But our efforts to reduce them have to take place now, when the danger does not seem immediate and pressing. Even though it will be less comprehensive, it is already proving a much more difficult mobilization.
10
I work developing technologies to fight climate change. Even if I found today a wealthy patron willing to fund my most ambitious efforts, it would take me 5-6 years before I could bring a process to commercial scale, and until 2038 for it to reach its fullest extent.
And if, God willing, everything worked as planned, I would only be able to remove from the atmosphere 15-18 Mtons CO2/year, out of the 1-10 Gtons CO2/year that need to be removed.
This is a Herculean task, made necessary by the enormous inertia in our present course. Yet anything less than such an effort, made with the greatest of haste, will unleash the Furies of a ferocious nature, turning on us for our benign neglect and greed.
There is no other choice, but to make our greatest effort.
327
@Andre what if we just consumed way less? Like, if the rich countries started consuming as much per capita as the poor?
10
@Jesse even reduced consumption would need to be done "cleanly". The amount is only part of the problem; we need to reverse the damage already set into the atmosphere, oceans, and land.
8
@Jesse From personal experience, the obverse is more likely: poor countries aspire to consume what rich countries now do. We are just the tip of the spear, the loss leader.
17
Mr. Scranton's closing argument, that mobilization to address climate change "would mean social upheaval, violence, censorship, curtailed freedoms, dubious compromises and radical changes in American culture and politics", is mostly accurate and Big Oil knows this just like they knew their products were creating radical changes in the climate.
Earlier in his essay Mr. Scranton makes two other accurate observations. First, that "there is no clear enemy to mobilize against, and thus no way to ignite the kind of hatred that moved Americans against Japan during World War II. No clear enemy also means no clear victory." And second, that "what’s required today is a global mobilization against an international economic system: carbon-fueled capitalism."
I think that given Big Oil's foreknowledge of the impact of their product in the same way that Big Pharma knew that opioids were destructively addictive the enemy is very clear: it's carbon-fueled capitalism.
If the candidates running for President made the voters aware of Big Oil's complicity in the impact of global climate change, it is plausible that the kinds of "radical changes in American culture and politics" Mr. Scranton foresees could be accomplished without "social upheaval, violence, censorship, curtailed freedoms, dubious compromises". If we cannot work together to solve the problems of climate change, it might mean the end of human civilization.
1
A better model for climate would be what we've all been through over the last 50 years as technology has pervaded our lives. No national mobilization on a wartime footing needed to occur, the profit motive worked just fine for building and installing computers, networks, the internet, and everything else like databases and operating systems. It all boosted economic activity to produce huge numbers of jobs before commoditizing and leaving us needing more. Fixing climate will take a similar course and has in fact started. We have a 50-year supply of petroleum left world wide according to US-DoE. Converting the economy to renewable power will be the work of the next 30 years. We'll do it for a profit. We'll also remove 1 trillion tons of carbon from the environment and we will profit at that too. The sticking point is the fossil fuel industry which wants a way to write down its multi-trillion dollar investments in tankers, pipelines, refineries, and other stuff. All this can be found in "The Age of Sustainability."
The last paragraphs are why climate change deniers prosper. To argue that we will need curtailed freedom, censorship, and reorganization of an economy (from on-high) to "save civilization" reeks of a power grab.
In my opinion, any attempt to successfully mitigate climate change will require millions of people to do climate friendly things without thinking about it...better cars and machinery, new technology, some user taxes (like on meat and Amazon deliveries), and carbon capture.
188
@UpstateMD
So without thinking really means being forced by the govt? No thanks.
1
@UpstateMD
That's great that you have an opinion. Unfortunately, your opinion doesn't have much in common with what the science tells us. We will need a massive change in how our societies are organized. Better cars and a few taxes aren't going to cut it, unfortunately.
21
@UpstateMD
The most climate friendly thing we can do is buy/use less. 4/5 people in the world are already doing their part by live by in small homes, buying little, eating less meat and not driving much if at all. The other 5th are the real problem, but good luck getting Americans out of their 3000 sq foot house, second car or the restaurant that serves too much to eat
27
"How would we know when the “war on climate change” ends?"
The 'war' ends when climate change is either stopped from increasing or reversed. Both are measurable, scientifically. It's not a literal war, but a metaphorical war. The Green New Deal could mobilize all of our resources, create jobs, and transform our economy in way that is similar to mobilizations that occurred during WWI and II. Switching from petroleum -based dependencies for so many of our needs to alternative fuel sources will require such massive changes and mobilization of resources. The author of this article takes the metaphor of War a bit too literally.
355
@Ellen S. Actually it's never going to end. Awareness has risen enormously in the last half century and we've known of climate change/global warming for the last 30 years but kicked the can down the road.
Hope for the best but prepare for the worst is where I think we are. Peace.
9
@Ellen S.
Not at all. He has researched, thought, and written about this extensively. See his book Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization. It comes with a recommendation by Naomi Klein, incidentally, although she is more hopeful about the possibility of political action beginning to counters its run away path. The Green Deal, sure. But Scranton's observations are astute.
1
@Ellen S.
The psychology of all-out war and desperation brings out the profiteers. Their most ambitious attempted heist is the GND.
It is a bad analogy, literal or not. An accurate analogy would be the global counterinsurgency war against organized crime.
3
Sophistry won’t delay the Tsunami. Perhaps the value of this analysis is this: this new world war will play out over a longer period of time. So it will begin less abruptly and seem more gentle. But don’t be fooled. This new war won’t ever really end and will mobilize far more resources than WW2. So yes it’s not a good comparison. This war will be in a different league altogether. All previous wars were essentially ambiguous, depending whose side you were on and because all enemies have been guilty of wrongdoings, of lust for power. This one won’t be, as we will all be on the same side.
So sorry, Mr. Scranton, that you find the comparison of climate change to World War II wanting. Would you prefer that we compare this existential threat to the giant asteroid that hit the Earth 66 million years ago and triggered a mass extinction? Or would that somehow do a disservice to the dinosaurs?
However we mobilize, we need to mobilize. Let's not quibble over analogies. Focus!
5
The two greatest threats to human civilization in our history, are WWII and Climate Change The article's analogy to WWII mobilization is apt in terms of the massive effort required, but there is no Axis power to defeat, only the vested interests of the fossil fuel industries, and there are many other differences.
I fear there will be great suffering and a significant risk to civilization as we know it.
Even if the needed worldwide massive efforts achieve the greatest success still possible, we will still see about a 2 degree C. rise with all the disastrous consequences that engenders.
Until December 7, 1941, the US body politic was as reluctant to join WWII as Trump is to acknowledge reality. That historic hesitation almost cost democracy to die in much of the world.
If the US fails to rejoin this climate fight, very soon, and act as a world leader in this fight, we risk far more than the loss of democracy.
We did finally meet the challenge of WWII, democracy survived and the US solidified its place as the strongest world leader.
The jury is out about how we will deal with this far greater challenge. Tic Toc.
2
The professor's point about World War as a poor analogy for mobilizing to fight climate change is well taken.
Very high percentages of Americans believe that human caused climate change is occurring. But I believe that resistance to change comes from fearing the solutions more than the problem.
Elizabeth Warren has reminded us that three greatest opportunities for carbon reduction are power generation, transportation and construction.
I am not especially frightened by the idea of electric transportation powered by renewable energy, whether in efficient metro mass transit or electric private vehicles. And regional high speed rail could replace a lot of air travel and I would not miss the current experience of flying at all.
What I am concerned about is the glacial pace and mind numbing cost of transformation. The Seattle metro transit expansion will not be complete until 2043 and involves building less than 60 miles of light rail at about $1 billion a mile.
We need a revolution in thinking about how to accomplish big public works more efficiently. We have figured out how to eliminate 90% of the labor needed to make a car, even as the design complexity grew exponentially. Mobile phones are another example.
But it looks like the incentives for efficiency in public works and much of modern construction are missing. If we don't fix that, then the fear of the government mandated cure being worse than the disease is understandable.
15
Call it the cynic in me, but I think that people will do nothing about climate change and the environment will kill off enough people so that those that remain adapt to the new conditions. The wealthy will have the best chance to be among those that remain.
1
Yes, the psychopathic ultrarich can still live large with a mere billion or so subjugated humans left alive to support them, so what do they have to lose from climate disruption, rising sea levels, or even a worldwide epidemic? And with so many of them espousing toxic right-wing politics while owning homes in Switzerland, fortresses in New Zealand or entire valleys in Montana, we have to ask ourselves if they're not actually rooting for the catastrophe that will prove them righteous.
Mr. Scranton is incorrect that, unlike World War I, there are no enemies. The largest number of casualties in World War II were civilians.
And it is civilians, especially the most vulnerable, who are already bearing the brunt of climate change. Migration will increase dramatically over the coming years and conflict will doubtless become more and more driven by scarcity, displacement, and disasters.
We are in the early stages of a calamity that--while not war--will share meany features of war including a threat to our very existence. The Global Capitalist System are the isolationists who think we can ride this out without engaging.
Their refusal to address the problem early and head-on will exponentially increase the level of suffering and risk we are facing.
6
The metaphor of a wartime mobilization to characterize the level of response required to face the challenge of climate change seems to me to be apt. To reach that level of commitment will require a sense of clear and present danger in the general population which does not yet exist, and may not exist until after it is too late to head off disaster.
8
Even without human-induced climate change, the planet's greatest challenge is still to live in a sustainable world. Population growth, lack of regional natural resources, increasing restlessness and violence, you name it. If climate stabilized tomorrow yet humans continue our patterns, is the outcome that different?
4
Scranton's first law, "First, climate change is not a war. There is no clear enemy to mobilize against." "We have met the enemy and he is us." (Pogo) Globally, humanity is the issue.
Yet he proceeds to delineate what it would take to effectively, substantively change the direction of global warming:
"Many major players in industry, tech, energy, and government have little incentive to go along with climate mobilization, since it would undermine their profit and power."
The major players who control everything are not going to have a mass conversion, a kenosis.
Scranton previously wrote, "We're Doomed. Now what?"
His solution is total mobilization. Who is going to lead it?
2
Excellent piece and pretty much right on all accounts. Yes, we need to mobilize to mitigate and adapt to climate change - just not in terms of war or "moonshots" or Green New Deals or whatever analogy seems nice to environmental communications folks.
Simply put, mobilization is military and civilian engineering patois for the project phase between design and construction (or action). Or - after all the plans, designs and contracts are done it's the period of time on the project schedule to pull everything together to get the action going.
Addressing climate change will require complex engineering patois like "observational method," too. This is how you plan, design, construct and operate a project with many unknowns, but need to move forward regardless of uncertainty. An example of observational method for project delivery are found in earthworks construction like dams, roads, and foundations. Climate change mitigation and adaptation fall under earthworks (with land, water and air all considered). Never oversell earthworks.
1
What is enigmatic is the methodology by which governments and industry address the global, planetary change that is transforming our "home"...Earth...such a lofty perspective of transformational thinking is similar, but not the equal to what our parents and grand parents faced in the last century to prepare and battle during World War II. As great a change as a direct, hands on enemy wrought in World War II is somewhat transformationally different today. As this column directly focuses...there is no concrete, direct enemy this time. Not only do we have to alter and swiftly change the course of our ship of state, but we have to alter the very nature by which we power that ship. If we do not change our very approach to how we live on this planet, the planet will force us to change...Let's make this a positive change. The re-tooling that has to be done has to be as dramatic as we accomplished as a nation to fight a tangible energy. This time we are meeting the needs of our very existence, and to that end it is a struggle unlike any we have ever faced.
1
If and when the 'war on climate change' is won, I think we will indeed be able to mark when that happens: when our global economy no longer requires the use of fossil fuels, and those who peddle in them have accordingly lost their political clout.
2
I think this may be one of the least well thought out pieces I have every read. Te author's first premise is that addressing climate change is not combat related. The idea that there weren't losers in WWII's economic realignment is naive at best and disingenuous at worst. His third premise is this "national mobilzation vs. global mobilization". It helps to remember that the first W in WWII stands for world. Apparently some group of nations worked very closely to defeat fascism across the earth. They did it without computers and the Internet. They lacked so many of they advantages we now enjoy yet they set a goal and achieved it.
They only real difference in that WWII was instigated by a series of cataclysmic acts of violent aggression. Climate change will not likely provide a single tangible cataclysmic event until it is far too late to address it. These events are necessary for people like the author to understand the gravity of the threat. Most Americans were against involvement in the war until Pearl.
Additionally, there were no monied interests buying the government to oppose the war. Today, despite public concern on the issue, these interests have a greatly outsized influence. What if Ford had refused to build tanks because it wasn't as profitable?
Finally, I'm not sure what possible positive outcome would come from this facile argument or even the point. It seems only intended to discourage addressing climate change. What could possibly motivate someone to do that?
3
Climate change, or more accurately, the mass extinction(s) our activities have set in motion, requires a level of transnational cooperation, collaboration, and trust that are the opposite of the impulses which produce global war.
Ironically, the need for transnational efforts exacerbates the potential sources of conflict as we begin competing for increasingly scarce potable water, arable lands, and dwindling resources. There's little evidence our species has the capacity to see beyond short-term, small-scale, temporary advantage to grasp the full extent of the devastation we've visited upon (and continue to wreak) on our planet and ultimately on ourselves. It's possible that the best thing we can do as a species for this planet is succumb in vast numbers to epidemics that somehow leave other species unaffected.
2
This is a terrific, thought provoking article. The problem of climate change is the problem of how human beings with different interests can work together to maintain a viable and sustainable planet. That is a problem of politics and diplomacy, not a problem of warfare, and a problem to be solved by collaboration and compromise, not total mobilization, defeat and surrender.
World War II ended with the defeat and surrender of Japan, Germany and Italy. It is worth remembering that total mobilization is not a stable, sustainable condition. Victory in World War II produced the Cold War. In broad terms, it was a conflict between capitalism and communism that continued for decades that included limited wars in Korea and Vietnam. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union could sustain the total mobilization required for direct war between those two nations. That inability and the realization that use of nuclear weapons would destroy the planet produced the military-industrial complex and carbon-fueled capitalism.
2
“First, climate change is not a war. There is no clear enemy to mobilize against, and thus no way to ignite the kind of hatred that moved Americans against Japan during World War II.” There is a clear enemy: hydrocarbons. Our infrastructure, our banks and investor class, our Defense Department and defense industry are entrenched in preserving privilege and advantage. Wealth in America is concentrated in hands that deny climate change or cynically promote denial, that want to squeeze every penny of profit from hydrocarbons, and who are eager to subsidize oil by spending tax dollars for oil defense at no cost to the oil industry, Saudi Arabia gave us Wahhabi fanaticism expressed by Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boka Haram, that was the source of 9/11 attackers, that is the primary source of worldwide Islamic terror yet it is the tail wagging the dog and may orchestrate WWIII in it’s effort to destroy Iran. Saudi money flows to terrorists and our banks, defense industry, and politicians. Oil and coal and natural gas, are clear enemies and they may ignite hatred against corporations including banks and against politicians that obstruct and reverse efforts to prevent global catastrophe. Those persons and corporations that oppose disaster prevention have corrupted every branch of our government and they are dismembering our Constitution in favor of an autocratic president. One need not wait for further evidence to make that determination but just watch the relentless abuse of power.
5
The author of this piece ends with, "The problem of climate change is the problem of how and whether human beings can live together sustainably on this planet."...........We can't, not 7.5 billion of us. By one-child incentives, one billion of us could. Our excess numbers fuel climate change, mass extinctions, deforestation, overfishing and pandemics. Our species is what it is---good and bad, but we are not green and expecting us to change our stripes and be green, is folly---we evolved from primates, not cats. Only 15% of us voluntarily recycle.....So why is 7.5 billion of us better than one billion?
3
If you want to know how America truly felt during and immediately after World War Two, look at classic film noir. Gritty, violent, and nihilistic, it reflected the actual national mood of somber exhaustion and desolation that was felt after the killing stopped. History wasn’t rewritten until the economic boom took hold in the early 1950’s, almost precisely when the first recipients of the G.I. Bill had graduated college and gotten a few years of work experience under their belts. What was a Top Five film in 1951? “A Streetcar Named Desire.” What was Top Five in 1952? “Singin’ in the Rain.”
3
I was collecting old Life Magazines at flea markets and auctions years ago, when I came upon one with an article on the efforts our government, religious groups, and NGOs to rebuild Japan just after WWII. It was a lovely piece highlighting the kindness and generosity of the winning nation to a defeated former enemy which had been traumatized by the horrors of war culminating the the nuking of two major cities. I was touched.
Some weeks later I came upon the Life issue that was published a few issues after that one. Life chose to devote much of the issue to a sampling of the unprecedented mountain of letters it had received in response to the article on Japan.
Every letter reeked with hatred and devastating rage that (1) any Americans would go to Japan to offer assistance to this vile enemy that had attacked us at Pearl Harbor; (2) that Life would dare to present the Japanese as humans in need of any help from us.
I was shocked at the sheer vitriol, raw hate, uncompromising rage. The Japanese were vermin, nothing more.
Professor Scranton's brilliant article brought back to me that unsettling memory buried in a musty stack of old magazines. A Green New Deal must bring us all together, this time in love and not hate. Love of one another for we are all sisters and brothers in this survival exercise. And love for our common mother, earth itself.
I don't know it it can be done. I do know a World War will never be the vehicle.
4
Not to worry. A committed allegiance to Insanity always resolves itself. That's why empires fail (but a diminishing few have big fun while they last).
1
Sounds like the author is softening up the populace for more "centrism" and more government totalitarianism. He gets is completely wrong, unless that's the real intention of his thinking. One thing is the same: " nearly everyone saw himself caught up in an existential struggle for the future of the planet." Yeah, that's the struggle we face. Not the government, unless the government stands in the way.
2
As Pogo (Walt Kelly) said: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
World War 3 has already started. Places like the Bahamas are the first casualties, Florida and New Orleans may be next. One big difference with WW2 is that Russia won't be coming to our aid in this one - Russia is positioned to be last habitable place on Earth - pyrrhic victory is theirs by default.
3
@Peter
Another difference is that we have already lost the war with global warming. The Green New Deal or whatever rational response finally emerges will be no more than a negotiated surrender.
1
@Harvey
I guess I'm a little more pessimistic than you, Harvey - I think we're looking at unconditional surrender. Whether it takes 10, 100, or 500 years, we're going to burn every last bit of oil, despite the consequences.
Agree that climate change - WWII analogy is flawed. The nature of the threat is different. There’s no precedent.
Don’t blame folks for making the comparison, though, when trying to convey the magnitude of the problem. It’s greater, if not as immediately dramatic, and the response will be much more piecemeal and, I suspect, much less effective. Transformation will be epic.
9
In terms of the earth's history, humans happened to evolve in one of the two coldest periods ever. Even then, during the Tertiary Epoch, temperatures, climate and sea levels have all changed dramatically and cyclically in response to changes in orbital and solar forcings. At the height of the last glacial period, sea level was 100-120m lower than it is now. If geological history is a guide, we have about 18m more to go in sea level rise before we match previous cycles. Even in this current interglacial period, it has been warmer than it is now. Vikings who settled in Greenland could grow barley to maturity - whereas one cannot do that now. Have humans affected the climate - absolutely. The increase in CO2 we have caused will hopefully prevent what would have been the next glacial period. What would be more disruptive to our North America and Europe - warmer temperatures or a mile thick sheet of ice? The fact is that what we are experiencing - and are going to experience in the future - is well within the bounds of what the earth has faced before. The notion that we can keep the earth's climate stable for extended periods of time, when the only thing constant about the earth's climate is change, is delusional at best. Let's concentrate on what humans do best - adaptation.
6
perhaps this is all true, but it doesn't mitigate the human suffering, mass migrations and deaths that are likely to occur from, say, a 4ft rise in ocean levels.
3
@Michael P The PETM (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum) 55 million years ago is a period of natural comparatively quick warming that raised temps by 5*C, but it took place over 20,000 years. We are on track to accomplish the same thing within the span of only several hundred years. Insufficient time for nature to adapt, and extremely difficult for humans to adapt without severe, civilization-changing disruptions.
6
@Michael P How do you advise we "adapt" to the flood of desperate refugees whose native lands have been turned into deserts or been flooded out of existence?
If you were starving, had no means of support, and were watching friends and some of your own children die every day, either from starvation or gang attacks, would you not flee to nations that were not yet so ravaged?
No "wall" will be high enough to keep them out. Imprisoning them for personal profit, tearing their kids from their arms, shooting them down like animals--nothing will stop people fleeing even worse terrors.
Irony: The countries they're fleeing to are by and large the ones still bent on causing the destruction of the entire world's environment.
3
Agreed, WW2 is not a good metaphor to describe the level and kind of effort needed to slow our self destruction. AOC and Senator Markey resorted to a cliche to make their point. Something really big has to happen. We understand they are just groping for ways to communicate the necessity of action. A literature professor might be helpful in expanding their vocabulary.
3
One can agree that WW2 was a devastating experience—all wars are. (Although there’s a whiff of ethnocentrism in the author’s lamentations, given that Europeans and Asians were faring worse than United Statesians.) But it is curious that a scholar of language doesn’t seem to recognize a metaphor, which after all, involves a strategy of implicit comparison to draw on certain aspects of a particular phenomenon and mobilize them for effective meaning production regarding another.
Climate change is a disaster on a par, or greater, to war. There are powers that be who should be held accountable. And the suffering that is being inflicted is just as devastating as that produced by war with the aggravation that there is yet more to come and no end in sight. Lastly, nature is irreplaceable and irrecoverable on a short term basis, unlike the built environment.
2
I think every proposal to address climate change or the effects thereof should come with (1) an estimate of the cost of the proposal and (2) an estimate of the impact the proposal would have on CO2 emissions/expected warming.
This is the real issue with climate change. While polls show widespread agreement that global warming is real and man-made, there is not any consensus on accepting the financial costs of addressing climate change. And don't tell me that solar/wind/renewables will save money. If they did they would have been implemented already and wouldn't still need subsidies decades after being introduced.
2
@J. Waddell " And don't tell me that solar/wind/renewables will save money." You've seem to have made up your mind, but let me comment anyway.
Externalized costs are always difficult to calculate and get public buy-in. Simple examples: Loss of ozone and increase in skin cancer. Hotter weather and more expensive cooling bills. Increase in hurricanes/strength and more destruction. I bet you could add to this list.
If we all paid a $1/day tax to support renewables that saved us $5/day in externalized cost, that would be great. But, we would would never know it because we wouldn't believe the "elite" economists telling us.
1
@J. Waddell
I think not. The dependence on fossil fuels has and is still the primary source of electrical power. The infrastructure to support that dependence is aging just as the transportation infrastructure is aging both are becoming more and more fragile. Then there is the endless mass consumption of rare earths demanded by consumers who are programmed to want the newest shiny thing be it a updated cell phone to that current trendy fashion to the trendy interior design.
Re-gearing and retooling society is a massive effort but it's becoming more and more evident that it has to happen.
It's amazing that a teenager sees so clearly what is happening and the adults cannot get it together to take action is actually more than amazing it's astounding.
The planet Venus came into being about the same time as the Earth, runaway global warming changed Venus from Earth like to a hell that has metal raining from the sky and a surface temperature of over 700 degrees Fahrenheit with no free flowing water on the ground. I read a lot science fiction the author J. G. Ballard who published about book on Climate Change one was "The Drowned World" where the polar ice melted. The book opens with a person on one of the upper floors of the Waldorf Astoria in New York City U.S. the man is waiting for a boat to pick him up. That book to me was amazing and read true I was 12 years old when it was published.
Now we are seeing what not paying attention gets us.
Just an old white man's opinion.
So this can't be a mobilization because it's different from that mobilization? So we can't call it the civil rights movement because it was totally different from the temperance movement! As a fellow professor of English, I would remind Scranton.
1) it's a metaphor.
2) the meaning of words is flexible.
3) connotations change over time.
4) if you're going to hate on a word, why not pick on "impactful"?
7
@James -
thank you. Well said.
@James
Good point about hating on a word--- "impactful" currently at top of my list. Where do we vote?
The enemies would be Trump and anyone else in power trying to increase carbon emissions. It's best to address climate change now, to reduce the injustice, authoritarianism, lack of freedom, war and racism that will result. These progressive measures are by no means disconnected.
5
It has been a long time since I read a metaphor being given the third degree.
AOC, race hatred, death, destruction and sexual revolution and more thrown under the bus in an article that seems in the end to simply support the proposition.
Just to be clear, there was no actual bus mentioned, school or otherwise. Just a metaphor. Just like we need to metaphorically mobilize to fight climate change: no internment or burning street cars required.
6
Within this comment section there are many voices of those haggling over whether the author used language that was exactly precise, syntax that met their standards, or metaphors that were precisely apt. There are even occasional voices of the willfully ignorant who argue that climate change is still debatable.
If I needed proof that we will never be able to mount the massive cooperative effort that will be needed to save civilization, this comments section provides it.
2
There is no magic pill that will alone save the planet, but there is the hope and possibility that in addition to a needed massive reorientation of attitude and energies of the population there might be technological advances we’ve not yet dreamed of. Like the mid 19th futurist who predicted in a few hundred years the world would be covered in a mile high of horse manure, we are (rightly) focused on predictions of doom based on extending the present into the future. If it were possible to demonstrate that evolving technologies that address global warming can be profitable on a grand scale, a massive restructuring of industry might become more likely. Hopefully it would not, in itself, have its own downside. It seems sometimes that, when it comes to human interference with the biosphere, there is no free lunch no matter how beneficial the intentions.
Wonderful historical perspective. It frames well the ridiculous hysteria of the left on virtually their entire platform.
Here's a thought: STOP BUYING CHEAP JUNK from countries like China that pump out pollution at alarming levels (and have no meaningful labour protection laws). Democracies put those in place in the West - it was a struggle, and then we failed when we shipped "dirty" jobs to China so they could get down an dirtier.
Any wonder that climate change and China's global output of stuff is co-related? Hardly ever see folks write of this.
3
It’s the West that has the lifestyles that contribute a lot to global warming, not China.
Of course Mr. Scranton is correct, but climate change need not be WW II to inflict as great or greater damage. It is the metaphor that matters, not it's literal accuracy.
3
Just as an aside: these are not US troops marching prior to Normandy, this is before they went to North Africa. They are wearing equipment from 1941, webbing, bayonet, and the rifle is the Springfield 1903 A4 (revamped version from WW1). By 1944 front line troops all carried the Garand or M1 Carbine.
2
I attended the National Women's Hall of Fame Induction Ceremonies on Saturday, September 14, 2019.
Jane Fonda's acceptance speech was entirely about the need to address climate change. Other inductees including Angela Y. Davis, Gloria Allred, Sara Deer, and Nicole M. E. Malachowski addressed this issue too.
It was surprising to hear positive support from the audience in the form of louder applause when the need to address climate change was mentioned.
At the current pace of addressing climate change, the human race won't have to be too concerned about mobilizing an order of magnitude above a world war.
We'll all be fighting each other for our own survival.
3
Thank you for the thought provoking article.
1
In the end, the author reaches the same conclusion as those using the WWII metaphor: “Nevertheless, total mobilization may be our only hope.”
The author spends a lot of words to highlight why metaphors are not about being identical but about being similar.
1
Missed is our human nature to respond to war. Indeed, the selective pressure that made us so human was probably war. The "call to war" arouses commitment. What makes this war distinct from WWII is that this is a civil war in each and every country. The enemy are the fossil-fuel interests, which finance the election of those who govern us.
The greatest battle is taking money out of elections. Perhaps that is why Elizabeth Warren repeats over and over again one word, viz., "corruption". Once money is removed, fossil fuel will go the way of Nazism. The war will be won.
2
Yes, so much sacrifice for WWII. We certainly do not want to do that again. Better to just do nothing. It is never too late to give up.
2
You mean to tell me that AOC and her gang plays fast and loose with analogies? That the Green New Deal shouldn't be analyzed at a detailed, factual level? You're kidding. I always look to that group for facts and clear thinking!
The present existential crisis facing the world today, climate-change and the extinction of human life on Earth, is akin to the run-up to World War II last century. The world mobilized to fight the Axis (Germany, Japan, Italy) and millions upon millions of innocent human beings were killed and maimed during that war.
Racial hatred, and the excitement of mortal violence are afoot in America today. Our president calls climate-change a hoax. His followers are baying today for war with a Middle-Eastern country (at the expense of blood and treasure of countless American lives). Isn't the extinction of humankind on earth far more important than a war over fossil-fuel?
Climate change has been ongoing since this Rock was formed. Most people truly want to be responsible with our environment, but it’s a shame to see people like AOC/Bernie/Beto make ridiculous claims cities will be flooded in 10 yds. These bozos have really hurt the movement all for political means.
In the annals of “burying the lede” this op-ed of 21 paragraphs earns a hall of fame position.
The author devotes most of the piece to successfully making the point that that a World II-scale national mobilization to fight climate change would not be the same as the actual national mobilization to fight World War II. Then, in an unexpected development to those of us who don’t make a habit of reading opinion piece subheads, he finally states: “Nevertheless, total mobilization may be our only hope.” Or as I would have put it:
“NEVERTHELESS, TOTAL MOBILIZATION MAY BE OUR ONLY HOPE!”
1
Great article but don’t waste your ink on today’s leftist, history phobic millennial liberals. Parents and leftist professors have convinced them that a) everything about them is special and unique and b) only their problems and what they are going through matters. The struggles and accomplishments of past generations is lost on this generation of narcissists. Too bad it has so much to teach them.
I am positively dizzy from the bipolar arguments the writer makes, like someone magically playing both sides of the net in a tennis match, he lobs a ball for the Left, then hops over and lobs one equally for the Right.
I'm not sure---just what is he arguing for here? That the 'war' on climate change is anything like WW2, or is it bigger?? Is he expressing a cautionary tale against great social and cultural upheaval or is he advocating it? Is he saying that the entrenched forces of economic power ruling the earth are baddies that can't be touched because they're untouchable, or that we must take them on and it ain't gonna be pretty? Er, that we shouldn't take 'em on because they are just so darn entrenched, I can't really tell.
There is deep calling to deep; here, there is...Left?....calling to....Left-er Left? Or maybe Right-er Left? Or...?
It's been fun. Like a Rorschach Test party game. Amaze your friends (and never let them know which side of the net you're really on after all!).
3
This essay serves little purpose. The writer takes a metaphor, then treats it literally.
Worse, affecting climate change is in fact a "world war" with some countries not taking potential destruction seriously, thus undermining serious reform.
Moreover the stakes are as serious. The world's quality of life would be destroyed with either Nazi rule or being forced to live underground for bare survival.
Think of your children.
3
WRONG. Climate change is far more serious than the threat of world domination by Fascism and Imperial Japan Mr. Scranton. Climate change threatens the very existence of life on planet Earth. The only positive in this Op-Ed is humanity does need a coordinated effort by all the nations of the world to combat climate change similar to the concerted effort which defeated the Nazis and Japan in the spring and summer of 1945. Something similar to the Manhattan Project with the finest scientific minds in the world working to solve this threat. Sad to say climate change will continue unabated. By the time Mr. Scranton and humankind awaken to this imminent threat, it will be too late.
1
Well, let's take this comparison a step further. FDR had the foresight to see that Nazi and Japanese expansion threatened global war. His Administration began the process of getting the U.S. on war footing (and in the process ending the Great Depression once and for all). His ongoing, confidential correspondence with Churchill and the deployment of American assets to help British shipping, were enormously risky actions politically, but they were part of a critical strategic policy to help Great Britain survive the immediate threat of Nazi aggression.
Flash forward to today, and a new looming threat: climate change brought about by global warming. There is no doubt about the serious threat the world faces. It is time for nations to come together in devising solutions -- now.
What is our President doing?
3
Mr. Scranton, a Professor of English, writes as if none of the rest of us can understand what a metaphor is or have ever read history or had great-grandpas who fought in WWI. The victims of climate change are all around us in the hottest and lowest parts of the globe. They are being washed away by storms and pushed by unbearable heat and failed crops toward the North. We are arming the border to keep them out and the President is sturring up racist propaganda to keep Americans from remembering our country's historical role in the agro-colonialization of Latin America and the introduction of massive carbon-based energy systems to the world. The paternalistic attitude toward AOC and ESPECIALLY Bill McKibben, who has spent a lifetime telling us we needed to wake up to the environmental crisis, is unacceptable to me.
8
Professor, I respectfully disagree with much of what you are saying.
The war effort against Germany involved multiple nations all uniting against a common enemy.
Polish exiles flew Royal Air Force fighter missions and were notorious for killing Luftwaffe pilots.
Brazilians flew US patrol planes on anti submarine missions over the Atlantic.
Canadian troops and sailors were instrumental in bridging the north Atlantic and defending England.
French fought ferocious vicious actions against German troops.
Soviet troops fought brutal battles and suffered immense startling deaths fighting Nazis.
In fact, if it weren't for Mariun Rajewski, the Polish mathematician who developed the means of cracking the German Enigma, the famous Alan Turing would have had to start completely from scratch and would have never been as successful and it is likely the war would have been lost.
Need more examples?
And, oh, by the way, the troops in the photo on parade are shouldering 1903 Springfield bolt action single shot rifles, which were NOT used by troops storming Hitlers Atlantic Wall.
Get all the facts in there because your argument is deeply flawed in its premise and in the details.
Sorry, bud, but I disagree with you wholeheartedly, battling climate change needs exactly the coalition effort required in world war 2, and Eisenhower, who stress chain smoked his way to lung cancer, would agree.
"What would total mobilization really mean? Judging from what happened in World War II, it would mean social upheaval, violence, censorship, curtailed freedoms, dubious compromises and radical changes in American culture and politics."
"Yet it also just might mean the survival of human civilization."
I wasn't sure until I read the entire essay, where the author stood on climate change, obviously he does see it as an existential threat, which only the most obtuse choose to deny.
Mobilization is required; worldwide total mobilization including the implementation of every method to reduce and or eliminate fossil fuel use everywhere, and the replacement of the lost economic benefits with massive government, and corporate, investment in myriad alternative energy programs.
To not immediately begin to end the suicide of humanity we are all attempting to bring about, is simply unacceptable, and whomever doesn't yet get it must be made to see the evidence that is piling up all around us.
Even though the effect on the current adult world population is not yet being wildly experienced, surely our sense of responsibility for the future of our children and grandchildren must be an overarching cause of action.
Isn't this why we prevented the abysmal future that Hitler and his like-minded psycopaths had in mind for mankind.
We went to war to ensure our survival would make the planet a better, instead of worse, place for humanity.
1
You are correct. Ecological collapse is happening. Total mobilization is our only hope. The question is: What is meant by total mobilization?
It is becoming more apparent by the day that our thought process is about to bring on an end to our planetary existence. It is literally “eating up” our planet. It is turning our Biosphere against us.
The underlying reason is clear. It is being fueled by behavioral cranial neurological evolutionary proclivities brought with us from a prior Age.
Here is the reality: Humanity needs to place itself in a symbiotic relationship with Nature that allows all organic and inorganic matter to recycle and renew. That includes our species. And it needs to accomplish this within the next 50 years.
We will need to come to an understanding that the adverse pre Mesopotamian Egyptian behavioral cranial neurological brain cage neurons we brought with us into this Age have to be erased.
We will have to separate out our originating presuppositions we have believed to be "inherent truths" we are now discovering were built on non-sustainable ecological flaws. In their place we will have to design and introduce into society forms of thought and systems of governance that reflect new ethical formulae, the purpose of which will be the protection and continuance of the Earth's diverse yet mutually supporting systems encompassing all life and nonlife.
Or we are all finished.
www.InquiryAbraham.com
6
The term "climate change deniers" is absurd. we would be hard pressed to ever find anyone who denies the climate changes. The major threat to all of us is the remote possibility that views of the "alarmists" would be taken seriously. Why would anyone take seriously the claims of the "IPCC" or Al Gore or James Hansen? Real science observations have time and again shown their claims to be fantasy. The groupthink associated with the climate alarmists and their brainwashing tactics present the real challenge we all face.
Manhattan is not under water, the polar bears are not dying, the Great Barrier reef is still vibrant.
The author is completely wrong. Climate change is a problem akin to WWII mobilization. The fear, grief, and uprooting of millions of people is exactly what is needed to fight climate change. For if we do not, all those things will happen when the climate changes anyway. The very structure of our society, especially economics, must be completely re-tooled for clean energy. This will be no easy feat as it was no easy feat in WWII.
1
Maybe we should be using the metaphor of Peace instead -- ending the War on Nature that our industrial civilization has waged since the early 19th century and learning to live within the planet's means. In a profound sense, taking meaningful action to limit climate change would mean declaring a truce with nature -- negotiating ways to live in harmony with nature's ecological laws -- de-escalating our need for constant economic growth.
The necessary mobilization is against those enemies of peace who insist that we can continue to exploit and pollute nature's riches without limit.
3
The idea of a national mobilization similar to WW II may at first glance be all about shallow sentiment. In this era of political division, that is testing our democracy with an intensity not unlike that that led to Roosevelt's election, it may be the best example we have. The disunity a wartime mobilization caused, the economic, cultural, social and political changes that resulted, short term and long term, intended or otherwise, are ultimately beside the point. Anyone who believes massive disruption, violence and dislocation are not coming as a result of climate change is delusional. And like the late 30's and 40's, uniting around a common cause, in this case avoiding an existential threat unlike anything we have ever faced, seems like the right idea. Had Fascism prevailed globally the result would certainly have meant a level of human suffering far worse than the consequences of the War against it. Mobilizing, first here as a global leader and then as part of a larger global effort, is the right idea and WWII, sentiment aside, may be the last best example we have of how a people can galvanize to do an extraordinary thing. The history of big things is important to understand and welcome, as is the call to unite to do something bigger and more important than anything we have done since WWII. And now, as we dither, it may be the last great thing we try to do.
We are not at war over natural resources or food YET! Given the American people are so fragmented on the thinking to solve the problems we face a national mobilization is hard to envision. Politicians continue to propose solutions with little if any change of becoming law. The American people continue to practice the Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) approach to considering solutions to any problem from local zoning to tax reform. Why because if reality be told most candidates for public office would be run out of town if the American people understood what is required to solve most of our problems, sacrifice.
Be it race, gender, sexual orientation, gun ownership, taxation, the environment or the just simply putting speed bumps on streets where children walk to school or play we seem to unable to reach a workable consensus. Consider that in both World Wars almost all able bodied "men" served. In our operations in south west Asia less than 1 percent of Americans have been directly involved. This is due in large part because of lies and unkept promises by candidates for Congress and the White House. As a veteran of the most unpopular conflict Vietnam I suggest the worst is yet to come.
1
This is one the strangest op-eds I've ever read. Minimizing the metaphorical comparison between the "war" on climate change and WWII is one short-sighted thing. But then suggesting that, say, racial violence was a by-product of the war effort is completely absurd since racial violence is as old as America and was profoundly unnecessary. We needed to build tanks during WWII; we didn't need to kill black Americans or imprison Japanese Americans. We chose to do so because that's who we are.
The author claims that we are incapable of confronting climate change without negative social costs. I am at loss as to how he came to that conclusion, given that his comparison to WWII is sketchy at best. That said, I agree that things will need to change but do they need to be "dubious compromises" or is it that he recognizes that our current power structures will probably change? That, I think, is what bothers him and our corporate overlords the most.
A key difference between the threat during WWII and the climate crisis today is the time dimension. Failure to win WWII would have meant immediate disaster. Failure to address the climate crisis will mean large scale disaster many years down the road. The sad fact is that we care a lot more about immediate disaster than about future disaster. We care about ourselves much more than about our grandchildren. Hence, nothing effective will get done in time.
2
All of that will happen, even if we don’t act on climate change. So why not act?
1
Thank you Mr. Scranton for putting this into perspective for those who either sat out history class or whose history classes were crowded out by social justice studies.
3
Nicely phrased: “ecological collapse may be just one of several progressive concerns”. However, if a solution to climate change is not achieved, attaining unity on whether global warming should come before economic justice, racial justice, etc will become unnecessary. We most likely have already crossed the line where it becomes unstoppable.
Yet, if a sixteen-year-old girl is capable of setting off a global movement, what would responsible adults be able to accomplish, if they were to take on the responsibilities resulting from their past way of life.
Germany is set to miss its own emission goals for 2020, and the country has seen frequent protests, especially by young people, demanding faster action to fight climate change and reduce the use of coal. Chancellor Angela Merkel's government is set to unveil a package of measures this Friday to ensure that the country cuts its greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030 compared with the 1990 levels. Germany's governing coalition parties have evidently reached an agreement on a climate package, which could cost at least €40 billion ($44.6 billion) until 2023.
The government's plans are expected to touch on a broad range of issues such as extending grants for electric car buyers, expanding a network of charging stations, raising road taxes for polluting vehicles, improving heating systems for buildings and raising a green surcharge for plane tickets.
This is merely a drop in the ocean but at least it is in the right direction.
2
From all we know of he history of life on this planet, one thing is irrefutable: nature always has the last word, and it is rarely a kind one.
3
I was born in early 1936, so I remember the second WW through the eyes of a boy and I can tell you the American people today are far too spoiled and complacent to come up to the standards of the early 1940's.
As children we were all out collecting scrap paper, cardboard, scrap metals in our wagons to take to school for the war effort. There was rationing on gasoline, & tires, sugar, meat. Mothers saved cans of cooking fat to take to the grocery store to exchange for meat stamps. We walked everywhere we went or rode a bicycle, if we had tires on it. There was no chewing gum or candy bars to be had at any price. In short we were all in it together and made it a part of our life. I don't see that happening with todays youth, or adults.
The other unspoken 800 pound gorilla is OVER POPULATION.
If you want to stop global warming you will have to deal with the never ending increase in world population. It's not rocket science to understand that people cause air pollution which in turn leads to climate change.
42
This essay paints an overwhelming view of what is necessary to address climate change. It comes at a time when more and more ordinary folks are questioning steps we all though were ways to help, e.g., recycling.
Recent news stories about the handling of recycled product point to the fact that any impurity in huge load of goods sends that load to a secondary system. So, if you neighbor doesn't wash out the peanut butter jar all your efforts are downgraded.
Then China stopped accepting our recycled stuff. So, news stories about it all sitting packed in warehouses with nowhere to go. Recently my apartment complex (5 high rises) stopped doing recycling. I've no place to go after 25 years of faithfully sorting, cleaning etc.
We do truly need a massive, comprehensive program which makes serious demands on people, which changes the way the whole country, indeed the whole world operates. Sadly, we have climate deniers in charge of one of the most wasteful nations on earth. We also have, IMO, many, many fellow citizens who may believe that climate change is an issue but are not willing to make much personal sacrifice. When we add to that the millions in the world who struggle just to survive and cannot care about the climate until that struggle eases, it is hard to see how we avert impending disaster.
7
The political and economic systems of the US and the world have become to rigid and complex to do anything meaningful about climate change.
We are doomed to have the temperatures go up. At some point there will be large disruptions in the food supply. That will lead to real war.
If humanity is lucky, the war will not be atomic. If we are lucky it will result in the death of half or 2/3rds of the humans on the planet so that the final population can live within the "carrying capacity" of the planet and at a materialist level that allows for specialization and all that comes with it to survive.
If not then we will either die out or be reduced to some hunter gatherer tribes again.
I do not see any way out short of that.
9
It’s all talk with the masses on board to fight climate change until they figure out what types of personal sacrifices will be made. The consumer society will be crushed. Jobs will go away forever and the government won’t be able to replace them with “green” jobs.
What do you say to the person who can’t afford to live a few miles from their work and has to drive their gas powered vehicle to get there. If it is a retail job $5-$6 or higher for a gallon of gas will steal an hour or more from their day. The people in financial situations like this won’t be able to buy the electric car like those in the upper middle class.
Go into almost any store and you are looking at people who are scraping by check to check. There are exceptions like Costco and Wegman’s but not many and even those receiving these moderately higher wages will feel the impact.
It will take one presidential term to undue the green new deal (or something like it) after everyone figures out the costs and impacts are real and will wipe out their quality of life.
The root of the problem is population, but no one wants to address that. As long as people keep cranking out babies and life expectancy continues to increase we will never be able keep up no matter how drastic the changes we make are. Additionally the 3rd world countries will not participate at any level that impacts what little quality of life they have when compared to ours.
7
Using the World War Two mobilization as inspiration now is useful largely as a "we can do it" reminder--we can because we did. The country's economy was utterly transformed in just two or three years in the early 1940s. Scranton's piece is useful in reminding us of all the the downsides of the transformation (and there are very many, only some of which can be avoided), but is utterly lacking in a way forward. What is your plan? This feels fatalistic...we need inspiration and concrete action plans.
3
I believe the effort to win WW II with our allies must be reinitiated now to mitigate the effects of climate change so the future is as livable as possible. Moving from fossil fuels to renewables is only one battle site. Just as we and allies fought in the European, Pacific, and North African theaters, we will have to “attack” the effects of climate change on many fronts. Conserving water, preparing for migrations within our country and immigrants coming from lost island homes, fighting the negative health effects of a warming globe - these are just a few of the battlefields we need to tackle alongside our established allies.
1
He wants to get rid of existing EPA regulations but he does not have a new set of regulations ready. He wants peace treaties without negotiations. He wants to get rid of all existing trade agreements but he does not have a plan for new trade agreements. He wants to get rid of Affordable Healthcare but has no health care proposal of his own. This sounds a lot like a spoiled rich kid lobbying to get rid of his teacher’s homework requirement because he didn’t do his homework.
3
@Thomas Williams
To be clear. Who are you talking about? My reading is your understandable anger with what Mr Trump is doing as POTUS or the author of this Opinion Piece?
I put my vote for Mr Trump as I also see the destruction of the very thing's designed to protect us. I shudder at what is happening and I feel an impending sense of doom approaching. By nature I am an optimist but that's harder and harder to maintain.
Just an old white man's opinion.
It looks looks like the word police are out in full force today. Of course the battle against climate change is nothing like WWII. War, total war, is the mass killing of troops and civilians. Something like 100 million died during WWII and entire nations were leveled. It was an unprecedented period of devastation in human history that took place all over the planet. (For those that are interested, PBS ran an excellent documentary series of what WWII was like here at home that explains what the civilian population experienced).
But climate change represents an existential threat to human survival if temperatures run away. People literally will not be able to survive in many places in the world. Combatting this threat will require total global cooperation and effort. That is, the fix wont work unless everyone joins in.
This cooperative effort is what those that utter these words are referring to. In WWII, the entire world was mobilized and engaged in the war effort to some degree. That level of global cooperation is what is needed to win the battle of climate change.
6
Reading this essay from the bottom up, one would agree this will be a world war. Perhaps not against a single cultural or ethnic adversary, though that may matter little if the global experiences are the same. Two or three small-scale upheavals have produced migration which pushed the limits of the European community. What happens when mass migration occurs driven by coastal flooding, environmental collapse, and over-population. If a million refugees can overwhelm our abilities to absorb, what impact would 50 million or 100 million refugees have. 2018 saw 17 million in 144 countries displaced by environmental factors, out of a total of 70 million displaced persons, which is more than during WW II.
This may not be war as experienced by some during the 40's, though the "social upheaval, violence, censorship, curtailed freedoms, dubious compromises and radical changes in American culture and politics" will most likely be far more extreme when 50 million hungry, thirsty, desperate and heavily armed folks come knocking at your door.
3
A few points of comment on what Mr. Scranton gets wrong:
1. There are enemies: greed and the massive fossil-fuel-plasctic-packaging industrial complex.
2. When the voices of change call for a mass mobilization on the scale needed to win World War II they a letting us know what is needed and reminding us what is possible.
3. Whether you call it "war" or not, climate change has inflicted and will continue to inflict suffering, pain, dislocation and death are millions of people around the world - in some case suddenly and with little warning and in others the way a boiling frog dies (by doing nothing).
9
“We have met the enemy and they are us.” - Pogo
I agree with the comments that humans are wired for short term, local gain. We don’t seem to have the ability to act globally. Add to that an administration that is anti-global, go it alone, anti-innovation and dedicated to burning every ounce of fossil fuel. That’s where the short term gain is.
The US waited over 2 years to enter WW II because we weren’t directly affected. Until we were, then we mobilized (and then wanted to take total credit for ending the war in Europe). Unfortunately we need a world wide catastrophe to focus our minds. Who knows how that will play out. To the author’s point, whatever the outcome, we will never be the same.
3
The author seems to focus too much on what we did in WW2, and not enough on what we need to do now.
While climate change may not be the same thing as a world war, we have already seen wars fought over oil. What, pray tell, does the author think will happen when access potable water becomes scarce?
Wars will happen. And they will be ugly.
8
The depth and extent of sacrifices required of all citizens during WWII are just the point. Dealing with the current climate crisis will require much sacrifice and that, I think, is why the current presidential candidates are not speaking much about what will be required to deal with it. The reality of what is required to make a difference at this late stage is frightening, but it is nonetheless a reality. So let’s drop “war” and focus on “mobilization.” My fear is that the sacrifices necessary are not going to be required of all levels of society, particularly big business. We can’t manage to have a truly progressive system of taxation. What are the chances of devising a truly progressive system of mobilization for dealing with the threat of climate devastation?
10
Although I appreciate any article that underlines the importance and challenges of global warming, this piece seems like an excuse for the author to pontificate about a subject (WW2) that he knows a lot about. Is there a danger in using WW2 as analogy for the challenges we face? In the authors own estimation nobody understands what WW2 was like anyway, so what's the problem?
2
I suspect that in the near future Americans will have the opportunity to experience climate change and a major war simultaneously. There will be no nostalgia for the next war.
9
Total mobilization would mean first admitting there is a problem.
With proper leadership and a will to continue as a species, we could adapt our ability to deal with crisis weather.
First things first we need to be added to the Endangered Species list.
Maybe that would wake some leadership up.
2
I think of World War II as a time when it was still possible for President Roosevelt and later President Truman in establishing the Marshall Plan to summon up a national display of patriotism and good character among the American people sufficient to win the day.
I see nothing today in President Trump and the Republican Party remotely equivalent to that.
9
“Social upheaval, violence, censorship, curtailed freedoms, dubious compromises and radical changes in American culture and politics” will be — are becoming — a consequence of climate change whether or not anything is done to fix the problem.
9
Every war is different. You want upheaval, look at the civil war. World War III most likely would be too short for most people to notice.
The “war” on climate change will require a re-evaluation of priorities, especially in budget spending. Old industries will decline, new ones will rise. Here is an idea, thirty percent of military spending redirected to climate initiatives.
16
“Campaign promises that we can fix everything at once are sheer pabulum.”
I disagree. The solutions will create the new economy just as the mobilization for WWII restructured our society. To wit: women in the workplace, the GI bill that expanded access to college, the social upheaval of the 60’s including civil rights, not to mention the increased carbon emissions and development of plastics which have caused the current plague. Maybe we can be smarter this time?
2
The writer confuses a metaphor for reality. The call for war and mobilization is a way of saying that the task of controlling climate change needs the collective and concentrated effort of the nation. And the victory would be our success in stopping or reverting the present process. It is true that such a "fight" would displace people and institutions and we are not likely to see it because of the self-interest of the people now in control. Nothing will be done until the seas rush into Florida, Manhattan is covered
and hundreds of islands all over the world disappear.
9
@Frank Casa
One of the things total mobilization would have to include would be the building of huge self-contained cities far inland on almost every continent to house the millions of refugees from coastal areas and islands.
Unfortunately, in 21st Century America and across the world refugees are looked upon as invaders.
trump's America can't even handle the southern border load.
We are going to need to learn to move water the same way we do oil, through huge pipelines of people in arid regions will also become refugees.
There is plenty of work for a lot of people if we just had some leadership.
Vote as though human survival depends upon it.
1
Regardless of what metaphor you use, a lot of this is obviously on younger people, who have more to lose. To make any of the progress that appears to be needed is obviously going to take real changes in lifestyle. Living in one of the most liberal jurisdictions in the country, I see some movement to use bicycles more and cars less. But when you do drive, you have to sit in traffic longer with the resulting idling, to drive further to gas stations. Long-term gas rationing could lead to fire sales of homes, What would an activist county do if real estate tax revenues, its greatest revenue source, crashed? One of the problems that I don't see being addressed is how to get through or around an increasingly dense urban core without driving. Some of the young adults I see seem willing to avoid having cars. For now? Otherwise I don't see a lot of ecological activism. The county is pretty active about residential recycling. They seem pretty lax about recycling in restaurants and hospitals, among other places that use a ton of plastic and paper. The younger people I see eating in restaurants where the recycling and trash drop into the same garbage container don'tseem to notice or care. The county is trying to hold back on spending. Where would the money come from to enforce recycling by such businesses? Too many competing goals?
2
Yes, fighting climate change will require real sacrifices, but not doing anything will destroy the planet - the choice seems obvious.
11
This essay is very enlightening on what war-like mobilization really meant. But it fails in its unwarranted criticism of the Green New Deal whose backers reference such mobilization. No one is saying that climate change and WW2 are similar problems, only that they are of similar scale in changes we need to make -- a point to which the author agrees at the end. We again face an existential threat, whose horrors (wars, famine, disease, unprecedented migrations, ...) if depicted to the public in graphic form would also mobilize the masses. Our national leadership to date has failed to warn us adequately, but the new democrats are taking up the cause. I say Bravo.
16
This is why English professors are English professors and not History professors. Because their expertise is NOT History.
To start poking holes in the author's argument would take more space than his column, and his thesis is fundamentally off-base.
Estimates are if the entire Greenland ice cap melts the planet's oceans will rise something like 29'--EVERYWHERE. 29' wipes out virtually every coastal city, or major parts of them, around the planet. Think: All of Florida and major portions of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginian, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, and the Canadian Maritime Provinces all under water.
And that's going to happen all over the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, the Pacific, and will cause the Antarctic ice cap to melt as well, consuming even more dry land.
Not millions but BILLIONS of people will be displaced and will die, mainly of starvation and brutal battling over remaining scarce resources. We've had a tiny taste of it with Dorian in the Northern Bahamas, and the raft of hurricanes, 4 Cat 5s just since Trump has been President.
The author's right about one thing--Climate Change is nothing like WWII. It makes WWII look like a sandbox fight between toddlers.
82
I recommend Scranton’s books. He’s hardly a simple English professor, a largely extinct phenomenon in this are of post post modernism.
I think the solution you imply is an effective propaganda campaign that reaches more people than now. Until more people are involved and force change, the politicians will not change.
Let us see what happens on the 20th.
Ok, you don’t like analogy of mobilizing for WWII.
You don’t offer any alternatives for how to best motivate people to take action against what you agree is an existential threat to humanity.
Thanks Professor.
9
Ok, you don’t like analogy of mobilizing for WWII.
You don’t offer any alternatives for how to best motivate people to take action against what you agree is an existential threat to humanity.
Thanks Professor.
One thing for sure, since WWII it's been one war after another.
War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Crime, and we've lost every one. Now a War on Global Warming. Nothing seems to bring Americans together like a good war.
Global Warming will bring its own wars without our help. Wars for water, wars for arable land, wars for the oil and gas and coal that got us where we are now.
Please, let's stop praying for war. Let's start working for peace and justice. And if you want social justice, work for economic justice. Feed and clothe and house the poor. Welcome the hungry stranger at your door. Take care of each other.
War is driven by fear and hate. It's the problem, not the solution.
13
[snip] The experience of war brutalized, dehumanized and traumatized millions.
This brutalization, dehumanization and trauma was anticipated with fear by civilians on the homefront, and certainly experienced by the soldiers in battle. Is global warming any different? We can certainly look forward to all of these. Might it not in fact be worse in the future, as (for example) entire coastlines start to disappear under water?
2
Professor Scranton’s piece reminds me of the last words that Sean Connery spits into Kevin Costner’s face as he dies painfully in “The Untouchables”: “What are you prepared to do?”
The fight against global warming requires a radical retooling of our hearts, minds, and way of living to insure the indefinite sustainability of our species. To do so, the foundational elements of our national ethos must be radically altered, if not totally eliminated.
Our consumer society, perforce, is incompatible with the successful struggle against climate change. Our economy, based on careless waste and expanding credit, would be rightsized to achieve a net-zero growth, steady state. This disposition has been absent since the invention of agriculture. Achieving this will cause severe social and political upheaval in a body politic organized around perpetual consumption-driven and credit-fueled growth.
This in turn necessitates the intervention of government to a degree only shades away from totalitarianism. Given human propensity to abuse power, the draconian measures needed to achieve the goal would have to be, simultaneously, supported by militant majorities while policed diligently to avoid the constitution of an unbridled dictatorship.
Ultimately, the principal change must occur in hearts and minds: Step away from a selfish view of everything and truly become our brothers and sisters’ keepers.
Are we prepared to do this to guarantee our survival on this irreplaceable planet?
11
Point taken but let’s not quibble over metaphors and analogies. There is wide agreement on the enemy — the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere — and wide agreement on the minimum desired outcome — to flatten the curve. Governments of the world need to quit finger-pointing and rally together despite fears of intended and unintended consequences. The longer we wait the greater the challenge and the lesser the odds of success. Times a wastin’ folks.
5
I think you may have missed the point—the author was not quibbling about a ‘metaphor.’
He was describing how difficult it was to mobilize even for the threats of WW2 much less climate change.
1
We are already beyond climate change. We are in the midst of climate disruption and fast heading toward climate catastrophe.
And so a sober look at this makes the very metaphors he uses to describe WWII perfectly applicable.
"Countless Americans (and people around the globe) (are about to) experience firsthand the terror and excitement of mortal violence, and nearly everyone (will be) caught up in an existential struggle for the future of the planet."
Last year alone nearly 7 million people were displaced by drought, floods and severe storms. The numbers will not only increase, but recur on a regular basis. There will be more Dorian's and more areas like Abaco where all habitation will be wiped out.
The impact and the consequences to human life will be the same as the epic struggles on the Eastern Front where the life and death of nations hung in the balance.
What we learned from WWII is that properly mobilized, the American people are capable of great sacrifice and great accomplishment in service to a cause beyond their own comfort and self interest.
But in WWII we had a committed political leadership that quickly whipped the private sector in line toward a common goal.
Today our political leadership and its private sector bosses refuse to see beyond next quarters earnings report.
This is where we differ from our grandparents. They sacrificed for our well being. Our grandchildren are asking that we do the same. So far we are not measuring up.
74
“nearly everyone saw himself caught up in an existential struggle for the future of the planet.”
That is the part of the metaphor that fits. Today, as in last century, we must all work towards an existential struggle. The details are different, but the stakes are similar.
10
We need bold, imaginative, and fierce leadership in this country to bring about real change. Climate change is just as large an existential threat but presents itself very differently. Mincing words about whether or not an analogy is 100% correct is more admiring of the problem. The 'War on Drugs' wasn't a real war either.
Climate change can be addressed concurrently along with issues like revitalizing American democracy, labor rights, immigration reform, health care and gun control. I am confident the American people can walk and chew gum at the same time. We already have "social upheaval, violence, censorship, curtailed freedoms, dubious compromises and radical changes in American culture" so what are we waiting for?
19
I don't think the Professor "Gets It". Just because Rep. Ocasio-Cortez used an analogy he felt was inappropriate, it doesn't lessen the danger of Climate Change.
Climate Change will cost more lives than WW2. And more money. We will be facing an enemy on a scale like never seen before. Mother Nature. The first casualties will be our food supply. Crops will die and so will people because of a lack of food. India, Africa will lose millions. Then the water. There will be massive food & water wars. Violent storms will flood coastal cities like Miami and the Eastern Seaboard in the United States. Countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and other Countries near on under sea level will be in a constant state of flooding. There will be riots, wars, disease, famine.
So, maybe her analogy irritated you, but she was right on in comparing the scale of the problem.
45
@ron214
Mother Nature is not the enemy. Extractive, exploitative, consumerist capitalism is the mortal enemy of life on earth. Nature is a mother and running out of patience with our adolescent species...
2
It seems to me that you've focused on picayune quibbles and, as a consequence, missed the big picture.
No one is saying that the battle against climate change is literally a war, and more than the "war against cancer" is. The terms are rhetorical.
The point is that we need a massive effort if we are to mitigate the increasingly dire effects of warming, from storms and coastal flooding to the projected extinction of species. And so far, the effort has been almost pathetically short of what can and must be done. It's as if we had fought world war II with pitchforks and rowboats.
75
The use of the word "war" to describe the effort needed to save our planet should be dropped. War has always meant destruction whereas fixing the problems of our climate should have the opposite effect.
In truth, humans have been at war with nature since forever. If you want to borrow a military term to describe it, mutually assured destruction is the one that comes to my mind. That's where we are at the moment. I'd prefer the term "regime change" myself and, while that too has a common military connotation, capitalism run amok is what has to go.
However, if one looks at the changes in our infrastructure that are required to stave off climatic disaster and the educational, social and health investments that this will entail, the term "new deal" with the word "green" inserted, is the terminology we should be using. And I believe that phrase has already been minted.
And those in power who are against it should be plastered with the term "climate deniers" and it should become a term that is associated with enemies of the planet.
3
There is another reason to link climate change and world war in a single essay. My greatest fears are that human culture cannot adapt rapidly enough to avoid devastating climate change, and that climate change will lead to world war.
Will we Americans give up our big cars and big steaks, in the next dozen years? Look at the intensity with which both are advertised--even though we know better. How likely is it that the people of developing nations will forgo these carbon-fueled fruits of affluence?
Next, consider the consequences as hundreds of millions of people are starved, baked, and flooded from vast swaths of the planet. Will fortunate regions and nations welcome them? If not, will the unfortunate multitudes choose to die peacefully?
Or will nuclear winter be the ultimate cure for global warming?
37
You pretty much summed it up. While climate change progresses, war will result. It's imperative that we face the challenge today. Too bad individual responsibility has gone out the door and we have pro-climate change leadership.
4
@Michael You hit the nail on the head.
3
The daily mobilization on America's highways is way more than symbolic of the war we already wage on the earth and on human happiness. Our hubris is destroying not only the earth but the quality of living. How about some humility to bring some sane balance? How about we try not living apart from nature instead of following the tyranny of our paved path to doom?
8
No doubt climate change is a global crisis, requiring global solutions.
It is SO unfortunate that, in a time where the world truly needed America's leadership, it has failed on a monumental scale.
53
@Gord Lehmann
It's extraordinary, especially when one understands that America has the power at hand to influence the nations of the world to come together and do the right thing, yet currently our President is on his way to California, intent on ending Californias efforts to control fossil fuel damage in the state.
It boggles the mind to see how this man is hellbent on doing more damage to our environment.
16
@Gord Lehmann Got an extra Canadian passport, Gord?
I will not quibble about metaphors. The World War Two or Apollo- Program ones prove handy.
The looming threat of a fallen civilization, though, reminds me of Churchill’s remarks about a New Dark Age. The enemy is, however, not a foreign power or even a venal little occupant of the Oval Office.
The enemy is nearly all of us. It is both Capitalism and Socialism in their various forms. Neither system puts long-term sustainability ahead of other economic or social goals.
Something new is needed. Fast. Civilization will not endure what we are now doing.
5
Perhaps the moonshot/space age is a better analogy than war? Although clearly the enemies are carbon and methane. And there is so much to gain, so much upside, that disrupted industries could be compensated or incentivized to shift. Has anyone done the analysis to build the evidence base? In any case, with our prevailing pendulum of party allegiance over country, we’d need to change term limits to stay this course if we were even able to get firmly on it. It will not happen by executive orders, that’s for sure. I think we need to accept heat, extreme weather, and relocating many many people and infrastructure from coastal areas. Run those numbers and see how it looks and who loses.
2
Wise words of perspective from the author.
Americans in particular seem unlikely to embrace sacrifice at this time in history. Look around at the lines at drive up windows for coffee and fast food, or at the lines of hundreds of cars at elementary schools in the morning drop-offs or afternoon pickups, windows up and AC blasting while the buses come and go largely empty. That may be a small thing to focus on, but we do have our odd obsessions over comfort and convenience to an extent seen no place else on the planet. And what would the car companies do without full size pickups and bloated SUVs. If our personal vehicles are cumulatively contributors to carbon build up (and they are) and we’re unwilling to even make those small adjustments and sacrifices, the larger endeavor seems well out of reach.
28
@Dale M It is NOT a small thing to focus on, the cluenessness of modern society. A moving van was left to idle for an hour and a half outside our building. I, in a rage by that time, got it shut off. Another tiny example, compounded in this country because of stupidity. The Dark Ages is what people face. With or without oil.
7
@Dale M Buses empty because expensive? To fight climate change we must pay for free public transportation through taxes.
1
@Dale M victims of comfort, by Keb Mo.
The author makes some good points. I would add another--during the WWII era, it was easy for the average person to recognize the enemy as a clear and present danger, requiring immediate action--the results of which could quickly be seen.
Climate change in contrast is a slow burn, an incremental but relentless increase in the number and severity of heatwaves, floods, major hurricanes, etc. And yet any effective response just as surely requires immediate action, the results of which are not obvious to those in the here and now.
6
@Tim--Well said!
Nature can become our implacable enemy. It doesn't operate by the rules of society and human psychology. There is no psychology involved on the side of nature. Nature can become like a python that slowly wraps itself around a leg and silently moves up to crush the rest of the body.
The great irony is that we too are part of nature. Our war isn't against nature in general. Our war is against the part of nature that thinks, analyzes, wills itself to power and dominates the other parts of nature. We are in a deadly race against ourselves.
We act like drug addicts who can't break our habits. We know that we are hooked on our current modes of living and changing that will be painful. Our attempt to push off our problem to future generations is the most shameful aspect of our addiction.
2
It won't be a war between countries as much as it'll be a collection of civil wars throughout the world.
But it will indeed be WWIII.
We have both foreign and domestic enemies to mobilize against. In America, it's the Republicans. It's the ones blocking any and all means of intervention. It's any government that does such.
We need to accept that fact that we are going to have to wage a real hot war against these people. It's clear.
It's not capitalism, per se. I see a burgeoning market for revamping our means of power generation. I see a marketplace moving faster than our government. It's true that capitalist oligarchs will resist. But even they cannot control the market entirely.
3
Yes, there is an enemy to mobilize against. Those who reverse regulations limiting auto fumes, methane venting, water pollution, coal burning. In reversing these regulations, Trump and the GOP are guilty of crimes against humanity - and against all life on Earth.
324
@Rethinking Enemy of the people? Trump and the GOP. They earned it.
7
They can stand in the middle of an oil company's offices and flood 5th Avenue with rising sea levels and they wouldn't lose any voters.
6
@SR
Donald never got over 46% of the vote 3,000,000 less than Hillary and his approval is stack to around 40%. His goose is cooked by the electorate, if he lasts until then.
The term existential has been corrupted. A true belief in this level of threat would focus on the most efficient (effective) mobilization of resources to reduce our carbon footprint. Such action would require elimination of tariffs on solar panels and subsidizing of panel installation at a minimum, not a protectionist, catch all legislation. The Left is not serious. If they are serious, they are misguided.
1
The Manhattan Project during WWII led to the development of nuclear weapons. Admittedly, a goal with dangerous consequences – but one that was achieved through scientific give and take.
What we need now is an international (not a national) Manhattan project to develop the best science and technology to combat climate change. At the end of the day (in part because world citizens won’t voluntarily make the sacrifices needed to reduce carbon emissions and in part because climate change is a global problem, not a national one); we need to bring the best minds together to develop a plan, have the ability to change the plan as scientific data is analyzed, and implement that plan. And there needs to be a consensus that the developers of this new Manhattan project will be respected.
3
Humans have always understood war. Us against them. Nation against nation. War presents an immediate threat to survival. It is relatively easy, under those circumstances, to “mobilize” the populace.
The impending climate catastrophe is something quite different for which we have only “war” as a metaphor. It is the only human event that attempts to convey the nature of the threat. In fact, the threat is much, much greater. The problem is that it does not require us to invoke our tribal/national instincts. There is no “other” to destroy. The entire world will suffer-especially and immediately those less fortunate than our first world.
I believe the privileged world will allow the less fortunate to suffer while continuing to engage in a lifestyle that is not sustainable...until it is too late. We will do everything we can to hang on to an economy and political structure that is enabling a small sliver of humanity to live in relative ease and luxury, averting our eyes from the suffering, dislocations, and deaths of millions of other people and animals. But one day, likely in the lives of your grandchildren, the “enemy” will be at the gate and there will be nowhere to run.
Now, tell me this isn’t a greater threat than WWII.
19
@William McLaughlin,
Unfortunately your comment is spot on.
The privileged world will indeed look away as climate change eliminates places like Bangladesh and other geographically poorly situated nations.
But as the crisis grows, that won’t be enough.
There is a large global elite class that meets in places like Davos every year, and they have no allegiance to any particular country.
The one ironclad rule of belonging to the global elite is not to criticize the other members of your tribe, and the one thing these people know is that they can live lives of unprecedented luxury and comfort aboard their private jets, yachts and numerous houses across the globe, if only there weren’t about 6 billion too many people wanting to breathe, eat and keep warm, ruining everything for the most privileged.
With every passing year that scientists announce that we are nowhere near meeting the goals to avert catastrophe, the need to bring the population down to manageable numbers will become increasingly self-evident.
Automation will reduce the need for large numbers of people within the next couple decades, meaning no reduction in the lifestyle of the global elite with the extermination of the “little” people who will soon be superfluous.
Therefore, as we move through the 21st century, we are moving ever closer to the year 1348.
That’s the sad truth that we Americans can’t wrap our minds around. Too many of us can’t grasp that we are the little people.
But there is a clear enemy, as Naomi Klein has pointed out at length, even if it's one most Americans are hesitate to name: it's capitalism.
The big question is whether or not we can defeat if we refuse to name it. Probably not
28
Part of the problem is the left refuses to acknowledge the impact and exacerbation that people from low carbon footprint countries make when moving to high carbon footprint countries be it US Canada or Europe. Until this is acknowledged I question their seriousness about mitigating climate change.
2
The title is misleading. Climate change may not be world war, but it will lead to obliteration of life the way we know it. The professor essentially says this, but the title implies that we can be complacent. Nothing is further from the truth.
9
What the good professor is underestimating is the vastness and complete financial power of the fossil fuel giants. As one of the Crown Jewels of post-WWII growth and the unbridled expansion of capitalism into what we have now, corporatism, they control more than he cares to acknowledge. They own political leaders and decision-makers. They own governments. The CEO of ExxonMobil became the Secretary of State (though that union didn't last) for God's sake. Imagining a world wherein the Exxons of the world simply dissolve is called unrealistic fantasy. It used to be money + profits over doing what's right. Now it's money + power over the very survival of the planet.
1
Even though climate changes are happening much more rapidly than science predicted, they are too slow to have the social impact of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Generally speaking, the American people, especially Republicans, are detached from reality. Detachment from reality is the definition of psychosis. Having behaved irrationally for so long after the science was clear (the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide was proven 150 years ago), the carbon/methane blanket that thickened in the meantime will probably result in catastrophe being the best possible outcome. No other social-economic goals can be resolved unless human civilization becomes sustainable. The mobilization required to address the climate emergency we face requires that other priorities be deferred.
11
The “War” analog is an hysterical overreaction. We have seen many prediction from melting Himalayan glaciers to sea level rise inundating our cities to be proven false time and again. Are we effecting climate? Yes, but the degree so which we are, no pun intended, is up for debate, serious debate. Climate models generally over-predict temperature increase created by CO2. Nonetheless reducing CO2 always comes down in the environmentalist mind to one thing, eliminating fossil fuels and going with renewables. Yet there are other alternatives, sequestration of CO2, reforestation and nuclear power. Further natural gas has supplanted coal for electrical generation reducing US emissions to 1970 levels even as our economy has expanded. These practical alternatives do not require the complete retooling of our economy and the disruption of our society. They do not require “war” but practical, calm, rationale minds to solve a problem.
5
@Mark V
Actually, nothing you state is true.
Models are under-predicting the speed of change.
Temperatures are responding faster, particularly in the ocean.
Natural gas has provided a short-term decrease in the speed of increase. It has not brought down anything. Long term, the release of methane associated with natural gas will outweigh any benefits.
1970? No.
Your cherry pick of the whole Himalayan glacier thing is to fixate on a writing error in the AR5 report that has been corrected.
Sequestration has *no* hope. There is no safe place to put gaseous CO2 and no technology to capture and put it there in any useful quantity.
Re-forestation is a very good thing to do but quickly reaches a steady state of removal and return of CO2.
Nuclear ... seriously? Go do the math have how expensive a plant is, how many and how quickly they would need to be built, how long it actually take to build one and how many years of fuel we have available and get back to us on how useful a tool nuclear is. A plant here, a plant there? Sure. As a global solution? Dream on.
The solution requires addressing the actual cause: worshipping "growth" as an end goal on a finite planet.
The retooling required and hinted at in the recent report is not industrial retooling. It is retooling the concepts on which we plan not economy.
Read Herman Daly and you will begin to understand
Ultimately the problem is GDP driven consumption and we are destroying ourselves with the waste of GDP growth.
20
@Mark V you are DEAD WRONG. If what you say is true, then why have the leaders of certain island nations in Micronesia purchased land in Australia? Simply put, so their people can move when their islands are covered with seawater from the Pacific Ocean. Leave those fossil fuels in the ground where they belong. I'll take my chances on making it to work and living without them.
2
@Mark V I'm not sure where you sourced this information, but it is valuable as a demonstration of how inaccuracies and out right falsehoods (lies?) are used to obfuscate the truth. One might wonder as to why another would take such a position. What is to be gained by planting one's head so far in a dark place. Is it fear? Ignorance? Denial? Or is it some form of misguided hope, that if you argue against a reality it will cease to be?
1
Climate change is not war because there is no clear enemy? Isn’t the creation of greenhouse gases the enemy? In WWII government spending lifted all boats? I’m not sure the soldiers being shot at thought their boat was lifted. Nor did the folks back home who were put on strict enough rations that ground beef was a delicacy. And, he says WWII was a national movement against a foreign enemy. National? I think the other 13 countries that allied with us would disagree. WWII was an international war against a clear enemy. Exactly what is required to fight climate change.
8
@JrpSLm absolutely correct.
This piece is just what the petro-oligarchs want: More ammunition to distract, delay, dispirit, discourage - and ultimately do nothing.
Metaphors are by definition imprecise. But the reactions and energy they inspire are literally priceless. Any language that galvanizes progressive movement on our climate tragedy is welcome.
Better that than the language we will inescapably hear if we do not rise to our greatest modern challenge.
127
Of course there are huge differences between the challenge posed to the world order by the rise of the Axis powers in 1939 and the threat the various catastrophes that will ensue should the rate of greenhouse gas emissions not be drastically reduced. No historical analogy is perfect but the point that situations present
existential threats calling for a full ,integrated response of all our resources doesn't seem that hard to understand.
Professor Scranton is correct to point out that there will be losers and high costs entailed in so radically transforming the economy and society , especially in the short term. Advocates for serious action sometimes are a bit disingenuous with arguments suggesting it will be all economic positives in transforming from carbon based energy to developing sources such as wind and solar. That isn't quite the sticking point he seems to feel it to be. WW2 may have " lifted all boats" and propelled us out of The Depression yet at the start of the war did anyone really foresee that or consider essential to asking for the sacrifices required across the board?
Differences aside the fact remains that we are facing again facing an existential threat that if not met head on will leave a world of hopelessness for the immediate future.
10
In World War 2 America was united like never before or since. We will never see a millionth of the commitment we had then when it comes to fighting climate change. We all know that. Every few years, someone publishes a road map for running a country on 100% renewable energy by some date, say 2050. The resulting headlines look great, & people walk away with the impression that, hey if we wanted to, we could easily drop fossil fuels. But delve into these road maps & you’ll often find jaw-dropping numbers of solar panels, radical changes to existing infrastructure, & amazing assumptions about our ability to cut energy use that makes switching to renewables seem daunting. What's not being reported is are voters willing to pay more for energy. For this to “work,” the price of oil, coal, & natural gas has to go up to force consumers to use more expensive forms of green energy. President Obama’s former OMB director, Peter Orszag, told Congress that price increases would be essential to the success of any program to reduce greenhouse gases. The majority of U.S. voters will never go for this. They won't pay more for energy. Period. Every poll backs this up. The overall reality in that climate change legislation is hard to pass even in good times. It's a real killer in an economic downturn. Are we willing to vote against our own self-interests & approve higher taxes on fossil fuels? Are we willing to make the necessary sacrifices? Absolutely not. It's never going to happen. Get real,
23
@Bill Brown which is why your country will doom the planet! Thanks!
3
@Bill Brown It is going to happen - because to survive we are going to have to make big changes. If we don't choose a path or it will be forced on us by the drastic changes in our environment. It would be much better if we made the changes when we still have the ability to do more than just react to extreme climate catastrophe.
3
A great deal of credit should go to FDR and his leadership skills. Unlike DJT or AOC, FDR proved a temperate leader who navigated through an extreme populist movement during his era to address the Great Depression and then mobilize for war. We just do not have that today, in either party. He mobilized action during the Great Depression by properly framing the issue and developing a sensible plan to address it. Our basic economic structure was left intact, though the excesses of the Gilded Age rival the excesses of today. He expanded the economic safety net in a remarkable cost efficient way. He presented and executed an infrastructure plan to maintain employment and build out our infrastructure, which paid dividends for decades. We just simply do not have a leader who possesses the ability to develop such a plan and sell it. Right now, we have two camps that insult each other via Twitter, and we are paralyzed and will remain so until we have the right leader to mobilize this great nation, like we did in the depression and WWII.
12
@Southwest 1965 Don't wait for some savior - we the people have to be the leaders of our future.
Great article -- until the ending. Human civilization would never survive the onslaught of both ecological collapse and the upheaval of a total mobilization bigger than anything we saw for WWII or the New Deal. Charles Eisenstein (in his book Climate: A New Story) is great on this: we cannot invoke war-thinking as a solution to the ecological crisis when it's the cause of it in the first place! Any paradigm that focuses on a single external enemy, to be destroyed through force and through coercing our own side, is bound to reinforce the problem.
2
The bill is coming due, and Nature's bill collector, were it a human being, would be regarded as an implacable sociopath, not angry or vindictive, but simply and utterly unaware of its affect upon the lives of human beings. We can take an angry, warlike stance against such a force, sacrificing reason and our humanity fighting like Norse Berserkers, but it's far more effective to gather our resolve in a climate of reason, creating our own destiny.
10
A gradually increasing carbon fee (rebated to individual taxpayers) would accomplish a great deal and allow individuals the opportunity to make adjustments to a lower carbon future in line with their personal interests and desires. It is probably the single most impactful thing we could do with the least amount of disruption. Yes, I also like the idea of green infrastructure investment, more research in green power, subsidies for retrofitting homes and buildings, gradually moving people and infrastructure away from endangered coastlines, and restructuring regulations and the tax code to remove subsidies for fossil fuels. These and similar relatively non-disruptive steps can help on the margin and in many cases create more jobs. But it's a carbon fee that really will get the job done.
Yes, we need to lead and bring the world along; will it be perfect? No. Will it be good enough? Better than doing nothing and worse than nothing as we currently are, that's for sure.
16
@Thomas
"It is probably the single most impactful thing we could do with the least amount of disruption."
HR 763 (The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act) would do exactly that. It's revenue neutral and has been endorsed by 3,554 American economists—including 27 Nobel Laureates.
https://www.clcouncil.org/economists-statement/
All the individual acts of sacrifice, while helpful, cannot compare to the impact that this legislation would have on climate change.
I urge anyone reading this to contact your congressional representative and urge him or her to endorse HR 763.
We all agree that Climate Change is not World War III. I don't think anyone would really argue that it is. However, with no other reference point in all of humanity that comes close there are no other analogies. At least using world war gives us a sense that we can overcome this existential crises.
6
@David D
Except the liberals that use the comparisonas a scare tactic.
1
@James No scare tactic - it is the reality happening around us right now.
The thesis of this opinion is that World War II is no model for the human effort to curb climate change.
The AIDS epidemic infrastructure struggled to find the correct model to fight the disease.
As such, this article is an important starter for a discussion even without the political will to reverse climate change.
2
Excellent analysis. Your first point, that this cannot be a war because there is no identifiable enemy, is well taken. Therein lies what scares me the most about this misappropriation of generational experience: the “war” on climate change will be successful no matter what happens because if the globe cools for whatever reason, we win because it’s cooler; and if the globe warms for whatever reason, we win because it would have been worse. Thus future generations will misappropriate the experience that was earlier misappropriated and use it to tip the spears thrust into cornfields of straw men.
2
@Chris
The author is wrong, as there is an identifiable enemy, namely, all of the negative effects of climate change. So "victory" is eliminating those effects, a tall order no doubt. And thus the need for a commitment akin to that of the nation during World War II.
2
Climate change will eventually be seen as blowback from the excesses of capitalism.
Replacing capitalism is going to be the only solution if we wish to go on as a species.
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@Plennie Wingo It isn't capitalism. Capitalism is merely responding to our thirst for ever increasing standards of living, and our production of more and more children, which are not the progeny of the rich.
The population of India for instance is more than three times the population from the time when it became independent. That growth was not caused by the rich or by capitalism.
Until we get away from slogans we cannot really address our problems.
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@ludwig Agreed. Population seems to be the elephant in the room that no one speaks of these days. Does anyone remember Zero Population Growth? It may be too late for that now but if there were less people on the planet there would be less carbon footprint, no?
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@Tucker
"...if there were less people on the planet there would be less carbon footprint, no?"
No.
Look at us. A modest little population (OK, modestly big) and sucking up the lion's share of resources and producing the lion's share of temperature rise and atmospheric degradation. Population has not much to do with it.
And yes, Ludwig, it very much is Capitalism. American Capitalism.
We are the ones who made a God of money, who determine personal worth, political sagacity, social merit, wisdom, ethics, honesty, and God knows what else to cash and cash alone.
There are better, wiser, fairer, happier Capitalist nations about, for the time being, but they have all been deeply infected of late with The American Obsession (cash, now) and not likely to survive much longer, as we will not without monumental change.
Population, overpopulation, is a great problem. Malthus dances nightly in his grave, seen at long last as not all that crazy.
But so is greed, so is defining success only as continuous, aggressive growth, so is the lethal combination (a uniquely American development) of the greatest fortunes in all of history with the most economic misery and destitution for the greatest number of people.
This climate thing may kill us all, but its really only a symptom. We are the disease.
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I'm a pretty diehard liberal, so far as this kind of thing goes. I would forgo abortion rights (and a lot of rights) if we could actually reverse climate change. It's going to be bad.
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@S: What's so unimportant about abortion rights compared to reversing climate change? Forcing women to bear children they do not want will only add to the climate problems, because those kids' consumption will add to the climate troubles.
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@S It isn't necessary to forgo abortion rights in toto. It is merely necessary to have minimal abortion rights, e.g. abortion until a heart beat is detected, rather than maximalist abortion rights, like New York's 24 weeks on demand.
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@Anna I was using it as an example of how important the issue is to me. Access to abortion is arguably the greatest right that women have been given. It's changed the world greatly for the better and makes women not slaves to biology. It makes me free (if I chose to be free).
We have to have people to have arguments over rights, however.
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"... when [the '40's] were in fact a time of rage, fear, grief and social disorder."
How the esteemed professor of English doesn't see these exact phenomena today, and doesn't see this in our fast-changing environment moving forward, is beyond belief. These are not points of distinction, as was laid out in the piece. No one (I've heard) has belittled the challenges of WWII.
Almost as if our English professor is looking at our "post" climate-change world through those rose tinted glasses....
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@Thomas, Well said.
At this moment, our current leaders are fast-walking us toward christian sharia, fascism and oligarchy. Socially, intolerance is overwhelming, be it against people of color, of different religions, or of different political beliefs. No, I don't think it's quite as bad as WW II, but I'll agree, it takes rose tinted glasses to ignore how bad it is today.
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English departments have radically changed. They are often very much involved in current socially thought. And Scranton is hardly a simple English professor in an ivory tower. See his books War Porn based on his military service in Iraq and Learning to Die in the Anthropocene. .
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