Towards the tail end of Al Gore's climate-change slide show -- the one in "An Inconvenient Truth" -- there's a slide on three misconceptions propagated by those who, for lack of a better term, have been called skeptics. One of those misconceptions always struck me a bit odd, and until yesterday, I wondered if it really belonged in the presentation. This is the problem line in question:
OK, if we accept that it's real and that we're causing it, isn't this problem so big that we can't possibly fix it?
Gore's thesis is that very same people who not so long ago argued that the Earth isn't warming, then admitted that it is, but that human's aren't the cause, are now admitting it's all true, but we are powerless to do anything about it. I'd never come across anyone like that in my travels, and I have met and corresponded with quite a few of these so-called skeptics.
Tuesday night I presented the slide show, and again found myself wondering, as the offending slide popped up, if I perhaps shouldn't do some judicious editing there. But then I got an email from a friend of mine in Ottawa. Writing about his encounters with those who continue to insist that dealing with climate change should not be our top public policy priority, he offered this observation:
Incidentally, something I'm astonished at is how otherwise intelligent people I know can dismiss climate change with the most stupid, self-evidently illogical arguments. I'm sure you've noticed this as well. It happens so often that I think now that climate change denial is part of a psychological self-defense mechanism of some kind, one that prevents people from admitting to themselves that they are part of a very big problem.
The weirdest thing now is that people who argued with me last year, insisting that there was no evidence this was a problem at all, are now saying we waited too long and it's too late to do anything about it.
The slide stay as is.
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I'm one who has been "green" since the hippie days, raised "green" by a "three Rs" mother, so I've been doing my bit all along. It has been encouraging to see people finally come around to the realization of what we have been doing to our world, but I am inclined to think that anything we do now will be "too little, too late." The train has already left the station.
Not that I think, therefore, that we should do nothing; we should fight this with every ounce of our strength, if only to reduce the damages. To, at least, leave some kind of habitable space to our grandchildren.
Another argument that I have read is that to start restricting carbon release now is discriminatory against the third world countries that are just now industrializing. Why should they have to suffer just because we are such wastrels?
Just another excuse from Big Oil?
It is true that it is too late to completely reverse the damage. Some damagehas been done and even if we stopped producing CO2 now the daage would still go on for 100 years or so. However, that is no excuse to keep making the problem worse. The longer we keep doign this to ourselves, the worst it will get.
Are you serial?
Accounts of the Apollo 13 mission popularized the phrase, "Failure is not an option," used by NASA engineers. In widespread usage now, it's commonly used to prop up magical thinking.
Engineers tend to be pretty hard-nosed about respecting reality and avoiding magic. I think they meant: "It might be physically impossible to bring this crew back alive. But if we fail, it won't be because we stopped thinking, and working the problem."
Maybe it's too late to save earth, but failure to "work the problem" is not an option.
Well, not to be too "Clintonion", but it depends what you (and Gore) mean by "it".
As Al would say, let me explain. It is not contradictory for a skeptic to remain both unconvinced that humans are responsible for a significant contribution to climate change, and for the same skeptic to conclude that even if he or she is wrong and we are responsible, the problem may then be too big to do anything about.
If my garage is on fire and I am informed that I caused it, I might register some skepticism. I might also point out that since the fire is fully engaged, that regardless of the cause, nothing can be done to save it now. The fact that I left some oily rags in the garage does nothing to change the fact that it is too late to save it.
You might say, in the context of climate change, "Well, that skepticism is what helped let the problem get out of control!" But that doesn't make the latter proposition false. Each claim has to be judged on its own merits, and each may fail independently to hold up to scrutiny, but it is not a logical inconsistency to hold both views.
BTW, Obviously I sincerely hope that the earth has a better chance of survival than a flaming garage. It is clear that we all need to do a lot more, which is one of the reasons I gave up car commuting for the bus. But I still contend that any solution for climate change has to be assessed for its costs, in every sense, and measured against expected outcomes.