Are we losing the human race?
Mickey Glantz
Dateline: Moscow (at Starbucks on Stariy Arbat)
November 11 & 18, 2009
People need the earth more than the earth needs people.
Mickey Glantz
The title of this editorial has a double meaning. It alludes to our race against the adverse changes in the global climate and to whether humanity (the sum total of all civilizations on Earth) can come up with ways to stop, if not reverse, the heating up of the atmosphere as a result of civilizations’ unchecked greenhouse gas emissions. The phrase “human race” also alludes to the concern that if societies do not come to grips soon with capping their total emissions of greenhouse gases, civilizations’ will face disruptions to the extent that they could disappear.
While the second concern may seem far-fetched to many as an impossibility (e.g., It won’t happen because political leaders are not that stupid to allow it; it won’t happen because physically the Earth’s properties will produce checks and balances against the possibility of a runaway greenhouse effect), signs are already there that we are on a path toward a 6 deg C warming, if political leaders continue to twirl their thumbs as the atmosphere continues to heat up. We have already crossed various proverbial tipping points in terms of amounts of human-induced increases in greenhouses concentrations in the atmosphere and therefore in changes in global climate. What we have not yet crossed are “trigger points” that prompt immediate action.
A Chinese proverb suggests that if you stay on the path you are on you will get to where you are headed; in the case of unbridled greenhouse gas emissions, doing nothing will likely get us to where we are headed — an intolerably warmer Earth’s atmosphere.
In my opinion as a 70-year old researcher who has studied climate-society-environment interactions for more than 35 years, I have come to believe that we are losing both human races. By this, I mean that people across the planet are now divided in so many ways that even small and local problems seem to elude compromise and, therefore, resolution. Because of this divisiveness, resolutions to the political, economic, financial, ethnic, religious, racial, geographic, ideological and resource issues confronting humankind, issues which will affect all life on earth from the not so distant and into the deep future, have little chance of being forged – let alone even addressed or agreed to – in a timely and effective way.
Pundits who analyze the evolution and decline of civilizations have proposed this or that reason for the eventual collapse of civilizations that exist today. But the way I see it the reason lies in human nature; for some reason, humans for the most part are focused on well being in the short term, with whatever may have adverse impacts in the longer term being of little concern or consequence. We are in an “After you, Alphonse” dilemma (catch-22), that is, no political leader wants to make the first major sacrifice in terms of reducing GHG emissions in the absence of any other leader doing it: hence, a stalemate. Either people do not believe the science of global warming, or they believe technology will save us in some yet-to-be-identified way, or they do not understand the consequences of inaction, or — most worrisome — they don’t care about the fate of humanity.
Actually, it seems that many people are intrigued about the end of life on earth and even the obliteration of our planet, if Hollywood movies are any measure of such intrigue and fascination. Consider, as examples, some box office winners: Terminator, Armageddon, War of the Worlds, Independence Day, When Worlds Collide and, most recently, 2012. Oh yeah, let’s not forget the US’s History TV Channel documentary “10 Ways to Destroy the Earth.”
Of course, there are also religious and ideological fanatics who don’t care at all about the future, as they believe there will be none. They live as if tomorrow is the planet’s last day. Some even see such cataclysm as nirvana and actively work towards it.
Many people do care about life in the relatively short term, that is, the life that there children will have to endure, maybe even they go so far as to think about the future of their yet-to-be conceived grandchildren. But they think no further. Some people have said about the future generations “I don’t owe anything to the future. It has done nothing for me.”
Under such conditions, I believe that we are seriously at risk of losing the human race. We are using resources at rates unsustainable over the long term. We are losing species as a result of human activities at accelerated rates. And we are changing the chemistry of the atmosphere is many ways we really do not yet understand. Many bad things are most likely to happen to the planet well before we heat up our atmosphere by 6 deg C about the pre-1900 level. Like the parable about the frog in the boiling water, we seem to be sitting and waiting. But, unlike the frog, people can think rationally about the future, if they choose to do so.
Dr. Roger Revelle, renowned American Oceanographer, suggested in 1955 that humankind was performing an experiment in the atmosphere by emitting increasing amounts of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning, the outcome of which [at that time in history] remained unknown.
Fifty-five years have since passed and we are still actively engaged in performing that experiment, even though we now know, through scientific research, a foreseeable (though not assured), overwhelmingly adverse outcome of our experiment. Before, say, the 1950s, we did not consider the potential adverse global consequences of higher levels of GHGs in the atmosphere, but we were then and we continue inadvertently on a path of destruction, so to speak, of our global climate regime.
Now, we are advertently warming the atmosphere. Because of what we have learned about greenhouse gases and climate change over the past 55 years, what we are doing to the atmosphere is no really longer an experiment. It is now anthropogenic pollution as a result of the known emissions to the atmosphere of cumulative amounts of greenhouse gases worldwide, but societies are collectively paralyzed over what to do about it.
(Cartoon borrowed from Colorado Daily newspaper. November 18, 2009)
Governments are reluctant to reduce their emissions for a variety of reasons: not wanting to give any other government, even those in developing countries, an economic advantage; not wanting to hold back on their energy-dependent economic development prospects; not believing that climate change is the threat that the scientific community says that it is; believing that an increase in global cloud coverage can wipe out the warming of the atmosphere; a blind faith that engineering can resolve the crisis; the absence of a credible and reliable “dread factor”, and so forth. Because of this reluctance, for whatever reason, many of the measures that have been proposed by scientists and governments alike are analogous to applying band-aids to a major life-threatening wound. Most of the proposals are feel-good measures, but are likely to be ineffective because greenhouse gas emissions will continue to increase.
My personal fear is that political adversaries at the individual, group, national and international levels will block a coordinated response by the international community to cope effectively in a timely manner. After 15 Conferences of Parties (COPs) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, political stalemates have become the rule rather than the exception. Because of this continued inaction, as of 2010, humanity and the international community of states have increased the odds of losing the human race. Helloooo? Anybody home? Do political leaders care?
