I write in part to get better at clarifying my thoughts. That said, this is a very rough rant-like draft to get a bunch of things out of my head, and I haven't done a lot of clarifying yet. I'd love feedback on this: what's effective and what's not in making my argument? Where do you disagree with me, and why? What needs to be argued more thoroughly? Where did I over-explain and what seems tangential to the main argument? Whether you agree or disagree, please keep it civil. Thanks in advance.
I’ve had a lot of discussions about Climate Cancer recently (I’ll explain that phrase in a minute), and among believers I’ve noticed two attitudes: Alarmism and Sadness. We’ll call them Alarmists and Saddists. The vast majority of the world, and even of the US, believes that climate cancer is happening, so I’m not as concerned about non-believers. Climate denial is a fundamentalist religion and a small minority, so they have a small effect on the world and it’s very unlikely that any of us would ever reach them anyway. I’m concerned about the Saddists, which are the vast majority of climate change believers. A Saddist believes that climate change is happening, and that something should really be done about it. They know that a lot of species are going extinct, they may even recognize that we are in the midst of a 6th great extinction. They know that sea levels are going to rise, that the polar ice caps are melting, and that they should expect a lot more heat waves and extreme weather events. All these things make them really sad, like the loss of a family member. The media has done a really good job at communicating all these changes, so chances are good that this describes you. An alarmist, on the other hand, believes that the world has cancer, and that we all have cancer as a result. They believe that human-caused warming is not just about the whales, or the rainforests, or people in low-lying areas in Florida. They believe that life as we know it is coming to an end. I think the Alarmists are right. I want to convince you to be an Alarmist. The reason why most people are Saddists instead of Alarmists is that humans are very bad at thinking about second-order effects. Take a look at this list of “Global Warming Impacts”, taken from the Union of Concerned Scientists’ website (ucsusa.org): -More frequent and extreme heat -Rising seas and increased coastal flooding -Longer and more damaging wildfire seasons -More destructive hurricanes -Military bases at risk (from rising seas) -National landmarks at risk -Costly and growing health impacts -increased air pollution -longer and more intense allergy season -insect-borne diseases -Increase in extreme weather events -Destruction of marine ecosystems -More severe droughts -Widespread forest death -spread of tree-killing insects, wildfires, and stress from heat and drought -Pressure on groundwater supplies -Risks to electricity supply from storms, heat, wildfires, and flooding. -Melting ice These are mostly first-order effects with only a few second-order effects. Saddists think about these and think, “Wow, that’s sucky,” and “Yeah, these are true. We’ve seen a lot of this already.” Meanwhile an alarmist is thinking about the second-order effects: “Military bases at risk. Hmm. I can’t imagine the US would just close those bases. Either they’ll have to shore up the bases or move a lot of personnel and equipment to different, potentially less strategic places. Either way, that’s going to cost a LOT of money, not to mention tie up a lot of man hours. That’s going to be a huge drag on the economy and possibly weaken our military power. There’s no telling what could happen to the geopolitical order if that happens. Or what would happen to the economy with that sort of drag.” These are complex systems, and I’m not saying that the US would lose its geopolitical standing. What I am saying is that second order results, like the economic costs of holding on to geopolitical power, are predictable and not often reported in the media. Let’s look at some others. First-order effect: Destruction of Marine Ecosystems. Second-order effects: “Corals, shellfish, and phytoplankton, which are the base of the food chain, are particularly at risk.” (Union of Concerned Scientists) Think about what it means to destroy the base of the food chain. Not only that, but Phytoplankton are responsible for 70% of the oxygen we breathe (We’ll get to trees too). The ocean is also the primary source of protein for 3 Billion people. That’s a pretty big number of people to resign to malnutrition and starvation. First-order effect: Rising seas and increased coastal flooding. Second-order effects: -The displacement of 20% of the world’s population. That means an increase in refugees, rioting, and destabilization of governments. Some assume that countries would build levies to hold back the sea in low-lying areas, but just to protect all the places with high populations, that would cost more than twice the amount of the entire world economy. -The disruption and destruction of shipping ports. We depend on shipping ports for our food supply, among other things. This wouldn’t happen all at once, so foods and goods would become more expensive, squeezing the lower and middle classes and leading to greater political instability. First-order effect: Widespread forest death (due to bark beetle infestations, among other climate-induced stressors). Second-order effects: Hotter, faster wildfires. Erosion and mudslides. Road damage that disrupts market supply routes and incurs repair costs. Release of more carbon into the atmosphere. Trees help slow the flow of water, so many reservoirs are now filling faster than we can use the water in the spring when snowmelt happens. It also reduces our hydroelectric power, putting additional stress on our aging electric grid. First-order effect: Pressure on groundwater supply (this is an egregious example of the wishy-washy, almost apologetic communication style that climate believers use when talking about climate cancer. Pressure? A community in India just lost their groundwater supply! As in, completely dried up. That supply provided 200,000 people with water. I’ll bet those people are feeling a catastrophic loss, not pressure.) Second-order effects: Sharp reduction in agriculture yields, leading to mass starvation. Displacement of populations, refugees, mass deaths. I could go on and on like this, but you probably get the point. You may even notice some repeating themes. I believe the most important and overlooked impacts of climate cancer are: Displacement of large populations, geopolitical instability, and world war. Disruption of shipping and supply lines, as well as our aging power grid, leading to large economic shocks and possibly a global economic collapse. Global famine. The common response to all of this is that humans are resilient and creative and will come up with solutions before we feel the worst effects of climate cancer. That seems like whistling in the dark to me, and here’s why. As we’ve added renewable energy, our consumption of energy has outpaced it. We are burning fossil fuels at an ever-increasing rate despite our increased renewable energy. There have been no signs of slowing this rate. The climate is a Complex Adaptive System, which means that quick climate cooling ideas will have unpredictable and irreversible effects. Spraying dark particulates into the air to block the sun, as some have suggested, might very well trigger an ice age, disrupt the jet stream and create a polar vortex over the entire earth, or even make the earth inhospitable to all life. It’s another example of humans thinking about first order effects without considering the second order effects. If you look at the list of impacts again, you’ll notice that many of the second order effects create a spiral effect. Tree death leads to wildfires, leads to carbon released into the atmosphere. Melting ice leads to release of methane, which is a particularly potent atmosphere warmer. Heat waves lead to increased use of air conditioners, which release more carbon into the atmosphere. The point is, we can’t afford to keep waiting for a technological advance to save us. It takes a while for changes to get through the system. It’s impossible to know for sure (because it’s a complex adaptive system), but most scientists estimate that we are currently experiencing the results of the greenhouse gases of 10-30 years ago. That means that we won’t feel the effects of today’s (greatly increased!) emissions until 10-30 years from now. It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better, and that’s even if we take drastic action. And by the way, that doesn’t include the spiraling effects that I mentioned above. Think how much worse it will be if we continue to wait another 10-30 years to change. So hopefully I’ve convinced you to become an alarmist (if not, please let me know where I lost you so I can improve my arguments or consider another viewpoint. It’s not much fun being an alarmist, so I’d welcome some hope). So the question becomes, what can we do about it? I’ll have to go more into depth some other day, but here are a few ideas: -Support gas taxes, always. It doesn’t even matter where the money from the tax is going. It will suck to pay more for gas (and everything else, because your food and goods depend on transportation), but that’s the point. We need to make it uncomfortable to use gas. Enterprising companies will cut their costs by growing and creating things closer to the places they need to ship to. People will use their cars less by moving closer to their jobs and/or working remotely. Hopefully some of the taxes will go toward better public transportation systems, but the main point is to stop the cancer from growing. -Talk about climate cancer. Use that terminology. “Change” is neutral. Cancer is imminent and distinctly negative. We need to spread the truth that this is really bad and requires immediate action. -Prioritize campaign finance reform and climate cancer in your voting, especially in local and state elections. Campaign finance is the master key to all other change, and states run elections. These changes are going to be difficult, behaviorally and economically. But we’re going to be faced with difficulty whether we change or not. I hope I’ve convinced you that this is an existential threat, not just an inconvenience. What we’re faced with is a decision between a massive, painful overhaul of our economic and social structures on the one hand, and a complete breakdown on the other hand. One theory to explain the Fermi Paradox (simplified, it says that sheer randomness should have populated the universe with lots of intelligent life, some of which should be much more advanced than us, and which should have made contact with us by now), is that a Great Filter wipes out intelligent life before it is able to travel and communicate across star systems. I believe we are at a Great Filter moment. It’s easy to envision a scenario where increasing global instability leads to a nuclear world war, or a geoengineering “solution” to climate cancer wipes out all life on the planet. Let’s hope we figure this out.
2 Comments
Jesse Engelberg
8/16/2019 12:14:35 pm
Hi Nick,
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Nick
8/20/2019 06:13:06 pm
Thanks for the well-thought-out response, Jesse. I actually didn't see it until this morning. You've obviously spent a lot of time thinking about this issue, too, and I definitely agree with you on so much, some of which I decided to leave out because it was already really long. And I have to admit, I avoid some of the behaviors that I know would help because I feel like I would become an outcast and weirdo in the culture I live in. I think we need to find a way to change the cultural norms so that living closer to your job, riding bikes, and taking public transportation become more normal. Similarly, I'd love to see agriculture move to a model more like Fastenal, where the product is created close to the place it's being shipped (in fastenal's case, because the product is heavy and costs a lot to transport). That would, of course, mean huge warehouses of hydroponically grown crops (but then again, we might be forced into that soon anyway since the weather has become so undependable). But yes, I think a WWII-style mobilization is necessary. And I think the only way that will ever happen is through laws, not voluntary action, because as you note, of the tragedy of the commons. Incentives are a bitch.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
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