Sheer Political Will Is Needed for Climate Fix
By Tom Zeller, Jr.
“Severe mental health problems are likely to surge, in the U.S. and elsewhere, unless Congress exerts dramatic leadership to help slow climate change — and soon,” began an e-mail message that found its way into my in-box last week.
It came from a group called Psychologists for Social Responsibility.
(I get a lot of e-mail messages.)
“Many Americans are already anxious about what climate change portends,” the group wrote in a letter it had apparently sent to Congress. “The greater risk is that millions of people will develop severe and persistent anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, aggression, and other troubled behavior if the U.S. does not quickly lead the way to dramatically reduce carbon emissions.”
I tread lightly here, as I would not want to belittle the ravages of depression and anxiety, but the question did occur to me: What possible impact could it have on the debate over climate change and what to do about it?
My suspicion: none — or at least no more or less an impact than, say, studies that show women are likely to fare worse in a changing climate than men. Or a 2006 study that examined “the impact of climate change on golf participation in the Greater Toronto Area.” Or even a study earlier this year out of the Czech Republic, which found a reduction, as a result of warming trends, of the compound in Saaz hops responsible for the signature taste of a fine pilsner beer.
“If the sinking Maldives aren’t enough to galvanize action on climate change,” wrote New Scientist magazine in an account of the hops study, “could losing a classic beer do it?”
Even as a lover of a good pilsner, I would guess the answer is no. And as for the Maldives, one might reasonably question whether the country’s “underwater cabinet meeting” last month — a stunt designed to highlight the plight of coastal and island nations threatened by rising seas — changed any minds either.
“Our capacity to respond quickly when our survival is at stake is often limited to the kinds of threats our ancestors survived: snakes, fires, attacks by other humans, and other tangible dangers in the here and now,” writes Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president, in his latest book, “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.”
“Global warming does not trigger those kinds of automatic responses.”
Obviously, human beings — individually and collectively — have the capacity for the disciplined pursuit of more faraway goals, but Mr. Gore suggests that both information overload and the way the market values consumption and growth over conservation and economic health retard our collective ability to respond rationally to the threat of climate change.
Of course, at the macro level, businesses scrambling to block climate legislation or treaties that, as they see it, will threaten to reduce their profits and hinder their growth would seem to be acting quite rationally.
The same logic extends to nations like India and China, which have argued — rather reasonably — that their adolescent economies do not have the ability to compete when bound by emissions reductions. The United States, also quite reasonably, is loath to commit to binding emissions reductions of its own until nascent market competitors like India and China do the same.
And while it might be true, at the individual level, that ordinary citizens have difficulty appreciating the impacts of rampant consumption when, as Mr. Gore writes, “virtually every Pavlovian trigger discovered in the human brain is now pulled by advertisers,” it seems unlikely that most people are closeted climate crusaders in want of the right message.
The real secret — no secret at all, really — is on page 320 of Mr. Gore’s book: “The easiest, most obvious, and most efficient way to employ the power of the market in solving the climate crisis is to put a price on carbon.”
Getting that done in the face of powerful opposing forces — from consumers who will always want their fuel, electricity, food and clothing to be cheaper than it is, to corporations driven by the bottom line — will ultimately be a matter of sheer political will.
Few world leaders are unfamiliar by now with the basic mathematics of climate change, and while some may reasonably quibble over how bad things really are, or how bad they might get and how soon, it is difficult to believe that any large number of them still wonder if human beings are contributing to a hotter, more resource-scarce planet.
On Sunday, President Barack Obama and other world leaders decided to put off the difficult task of reaching a climate change agreement at a global climate conference scheduled for next month, agreeing instead to make it the mission of the Copenhagen conference to reach a less specific “politically binding” agreement that would punt the most difficult issues into the future.
This comes after news late last week that Brazil, a top emitter, aimed to cut emissions by as much as 39 percent over expected 2020 levels — a development that suggested the stakes for all nations had been raised.
Spurred in part by Brazil’s “voluntary” commitment, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he was undertaking a drive to persuade other countries to come up with “ambitious proposals” of their own.
Perhaps he would be helped in his mission by “Cats Against Climate Change.”
Google that phrase and you will come across a video of an oddly chattering tabby interpreted by subtitles.
“Someone left this camera on,” the cat informs us, looking cautiously around the room, and then plaintively at his audience. “I don’t have much time, so I’ll be brief.”
The conceit is unnecessarily complicated, but we learn that this cat is delivering a message for another cat, Felix.
In any event, our cat tells us that Felix has concerns about the “funny weather,” which he attributes to “the cars.”
This funny weather, Felix says, heralds a wretched future of rain and puddles. “He thinks the humans know,” the tabby tells us, “but are too lazy to deal with it.”
