Changing the Climate: A Return to Science-Based Decision-Making

Apparently while I was on vacation this summer America officially entered the FUBAR zone. The first half of 2012 has some pretty apocalypt~ish weather trends, with the U.S. breaking thousands of temperature records, half of America declared a disaster area, and massive crop failures across the grain belt guarantee food prices will spike in September. Let’s not forget the hail storms, massive power outages, haboobs, derechos, and other End of Days occurrences of 2012. So when do the aphids and frogs arrive?

Yet Global Warming, Climate Change, or The Sky is Falling, depending on your perspective, has garnered nary a mention in the Presidential election. David Roberts wrote an excellent piece on the current state of affairs regarding climate change, saying “It’s as though the very term is an endangered bird — every time it flitters across a screen somewhere, it’s met with great excitement.” But if we drop the discussion on limiting carbon emissions, we’re all going extinct.

Scientific studies continue to demonstrate a correlation between carbon emissions and a spike in global temperatures and extreme weather events. See the shifting temperature distribution graph and the average temperature chart if you don’t believe me. Yet the cultural conversation in America is so scientifically illiterate and willfully ignorant that it overpowers peer-reviewed research, an international consensus, and the very future of stable human civilizations.

NASA’s graph of Shifting Distribution of Summer Temperature Anomalies

Just as scientists are finally proving the impacts of carbon emissions on climate change, even able to predict the increased likelihood of certain events, the Climate Skeptics and Deniers are doubling-down. One example is the American Tradition Institute using (read: abusing) the Freedom of Information Act to review emails between climate scientists and journalists to try and discredit the science. What are their intrinsic motivations, and who among them (if any) can be reached before they’re fully absorbed by the Dark Side?

In my estimation, there’s a few different, equally potent, motivations for denying Climate Change. Namely Money, Religion, and Politics.

#1: Show Me the Money! Not only do oil companies not want to admit they’re worse than Big Tobacco (because they’re killing us all, involuntarily), but their very value depends on denying CC to the grave. Bill McKibben says we can only burn 10 percent of the known, proven oil reserves, and avoid catastrophic human-caused climate change. That’s to say, if we want to keep a relatively stable climate, and avoid wildly spiraling feedback loops in our ecosystems, we need to keep the average temperature increase below 2°C. Which means oil companies would have to leave 90 percent of their value in the ground. That’s a $20 trillion dollar write-off for some of the most profitable companies on the planet. Try telling Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, or any of the other carbon-peddlers that their wares are poisoning the planet. I’m pretty sure they have ways of dealing with you that are… extra-judicial.

#2: Satan is my Motor. The cognitive dissonance of our society, in relation to scientific reasoning, is as extreme as it is dysfunctional. Nowhere in modern society is our pass on logic as obvious as religion. Religious beliefs and dogma are impossible to reconcile with the scientific method. Yet scientists and skeptics have lost the battle for a unified coherent mind, apparently, and don’t even challenge the clearly inferior thought process applied to belief systems.

Somewhere in Christianity’s dogma there’s a deeply problematic schism. The earth is only 6,000 years old, yet we have these oil deposits that originated from – where, exactly? According to Creationist Worldview, coal and oil were clearly formed during Noah’s Flood, so back up, heretics! It’s hard to imagine the gymnastic contortions theologians must need to employ to explain oil, but the most obvious answer is the Devil is testing our Faith in God. So what does it mean to willingly use this oil, whose provenance cannot be truly (scientifically) explained, to power our global economy? Are we allowing Satan to run our motors, right to the gates of Hell? Indeed, is Hell the Earth we’re creating for ourselves through our wanton use of finite natural resources, and ostrich response to the resulting consequences?

#3 I Have a Dream! Conservatives dream of a world of limitless growth, where people are rewarded commensurate to their abilities, the unfettered invisible hand of the market makes everything right, and there are no environmental or social welfare issues that require government intervention. (Unless you’re trying to get gay married or abort a baby, of course, then we’ll be spying on you from the bedroom closet.) Belief in human-caused climate change closely correlates with political beliefs. And that’s not just FOX News viewers – although they are more interested in fighting aliens than climate change, nonsensically enough. There’s a host of studies that show when challenging a person’s ‘beliefs’, additional facts disproving their viewpoint merely steel their resolve. So how can we cut through the fantasy to impart a rather dire reality? I don’t have an answer to this question, even though it may be the key to saving the world – from ourselves.

So where does all this leave America, and the world? We should be investing in education, healthcare, public transportation, a low-carbon economy, and low-impact agriculture, if we’re to have sufficient infrastructure to support our way of life as natural resources become scarce and population continues to spike. I would add free birth control and a focus on zero population growth, but it seems that goal was too unpopular among our selfish species to stay on the global agenda. Either way, the Business as Usual approach to economic and environmental stewardship is going to end us up like Easter Island (or the reindeer released on St. Matthew Island) – only this time, Earth is our island, and our Mars Life Raft isn’t quite ready to launch. If humanity doesn’t start curbing our consumption, destruction and growth, Mother Nature will, and the Great Die Off will not respect wealth, race, religion or any other Us-vs-Them groupings our bizarre society can create.

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