Fragilecologies Archives
13 March 2001
In many countries, when there is a change of governing political parties, there is a change in philosophy about many issues. There is a tendency to pursue new approaches and discard the old, without an objective evaluation of “worth” of many of the existing policies. Yet some of those policies may work well. The United States is not immune to this. Clinton’s administration (relatively pro-environmental protection) has been replaced by the Bush administration (pro-resource use).
The Bush administration has the opportunity to take a fresh look at the global warming issue by holding its own “global warming court” that brings together the yea-sayers, the naysayers, and those “in between” in order to decide on appropriate tactical and strategic responses to this potential global threat. Such a court may find that the proverbial “glass” of evidence for human involvement in global warming is “75% full.”
Bridging the gap between yea-sayers and naysayers on the prospects of global warming and the surprising adverse impacts that might ensue is not an easy task. Obviously there are lots of issues these two diametrically opposed groups can find to disagree on: is the warming caused by human activities or is it natural in origin? Can different satellite measurements be reconciled to determine the degree of atmospheric warming? Where’s the missing carbon sink? And what about the cool period of 1940-70, and so forth.
There are, however, solid facts that all can (or should) agree on: seventeen of the eighteen warmest years in the twentieth century occurred since 1980. The atmosphere has warmed. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased during the twentieth century.
Glaciers worldwide are noticeably retreating. And the scariest of all, large chunks of the Antarctic ice mass have broken away.
Clearly, an increasing number of scientists have been joining the ranks of those concerned about the likelihood of human interference in the natural processes that produce the earth’s climate (i.e., the yea-sayers). It is time for funding agents, the media, and the political leaders who have representatives in both camps to approach the global warming issue in a collaborative way.
I myself am not sure how a global warming, natural or human-induced, will play out in the real world (as opposed to how it plays out in highly sophisticated computer models). Nevertheless, there are enough pieces of the climate change puzzle on the table to prompt rational people (including incoming policy makers) to ponder the issue more carefully and with less hype, fanfare, and acrimony toward those with opposing views. This is not a call for more science, but a call for more common sense.
To stand by and do nothing just for the sake of undoing the policies of a former president would be folly. With the issuance of the 2001 IPCC Report and the responses to it, it is time to tone down the rhetoric and ratchet up the interest in addressing global warming. Both yea-sayers and naysayers would concur that it is a plausible, even if they do not yet agree whether it is a real, threat.
Even though we do not think that our house will be struck by lightning, we all buy insurance against that likelihood. We just don’t want to take the chance. We buy the insurance and hope it never happens. Thus, policies to deal with global warming, regardless of the human contribution to it, are a good insurance policy.