Fatalism or Fervor

For a Nobel Prize-winning academic, Paul Krugman has a remarkable talent for breaking issues down to their essence and making a simple, powerful case. In yesterday’s column he argues forcefully for strong financial regulation, suggesting that Barney Frank’s bill, which as already passed the House, is preferable to Chris Dodd’s (weaker) bill which has yet to clear the Senate. This is all well and good, and I urge everyone to write his/her elected representatives—Senators especially—to tell them how if we’re going to offer financial institutions de facto guarantees of bailouts in the event of their impending failure, they MUST submit to increased regulation so as to mitigate financial risk.

But I don’t want to talk any more about financial regulatory reform today; I want to talk more about climate change and about whether it makes any sense politically or personally to push for mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.

Here’s a list of things I believe related to climate change:

1. If current trends in human energy production and utilization continue without modification, the earth’s climate will warm dramatically over the next century.


2. Local effects of global warming are difficult to predict but likely will be significant and potentially disastrous.


3. If it were possible to avoid such a potential disaster without serious disruption to our way of life, it would be desirable to do so.


4. Meaningful action against climate change can take place only at a national and international level. In other words, it is only through the creation of new laws and new international treaties that human beings have any chance of forestalling dangerous climate change.


5. Meaningful action against climate change may not be achievable without serious disruption to our economies and our way of life. (For example, if beginning tomorrow, every motor vehicle on the face of the planet started driving half as much as it drives today and stuck to this reduced mileage indefinitely, that would only account for approximately 10% of the CO2 emissions reductions required to keep atmospheric CO2 under 450ppm at 2050.)


6. Given the difficulty of meaningful action and the likelihood of serious disruptions to our economies and our way of life, it is likely that useful climate change mitigation cannot be achieved, and it is likely that it will be actively disadvantageous to any individual, party or nation who aggressively pursues climate change mitigation in the face of general lack of action. (see Tragedy of the Commons.)


7. The scariest potential consequences of global warming all have to do with geopolitical instability and war, therefore the creation and improvement of structures to deal with mass migrations, conflict, and public health as well as efforts directed at nuclear arms reduction and anti-proliferation may be the most realistic and cost-effective ways to prevent a climate change disaster of world-historical proportions.


8. A massive investment in advanced energy technology research and development such as that called for by Bill Gates would likely be of short-term economic and political benefit and has a chance of forestalling the worst effects of our continued reliance on fossil fuels.
   

So I guess what I’ve done here is argue myself away from “fervor” regarding climate change and closer to “fatalism,” though maybe not all the way there. I don’t believe that the worst possible effects of CO2-induced global warming are inevitable, nor do I believe that there is nothing we can do to improve the situation. The minimum we should expect of our political leaders is that they acknowledge publicly and repeatedly that global warming is coming, that it is caused by human action and that it is likely to be a big deal. We should expect our leaders to call for reasonable sacrifices on the part of citizens to mitigate greenhouse emissions and should ask for the creation of new relevant laws so long as they are not unduly disruptive to our economies. We should also be willing to knowledge that such efforts may still be insufficient and should prepare ourselves and our institutions to deal with the climate change that almost certainly will be coming.