What does it mean to treat climate change as certain?
In Bret Stephens’ disappointing first column for the New York Times, he suggested that climate change was not “certain” and that climate change skepticism may be fueled in part by the unrealistic zeal of climate change zealots. He also stated that the globe is warming and humans are responsible for at least some of it. For acknowledging climate change in this way, he was attacked online as a “climate change denialist.” A lot of this reaction was unhinged — a Rolling Stone writer recommended that Bret “eat dog dicks” — but even the hinged commentary revealed a high level of confidence in the science of climate change. A Slate writer was terrified by the idea that some “truth[s] may not be knowable,” and a Mother Jones writer deplored the column’s “water muddying” because she knows exactly how clear the water is supposed to be. And John Lovett, a former Obama advisor, said “America will remember Miami fondly,” because the only way Miami will survive the coming climate apocalypse is if everyone agrees that there is certainly a coming climate apocalypse.
Setting aside the wisdom of “trusting” “science” — the same “science,” for example, that set off the obesity/diabetes/heart disease epidemic by telling the country for fifty years to eat sugar instead of fat — I’m interested in what it actually means to not have any doubts about climate change. If Bret Stephens can be pilloried for acknowledging that climate change is happening while also saying that there might be some things we don’t know about it, then it stands to reason that a large portion of the population doesn’t have the same kind of doubts. So what does that certainty look like?
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), at the current pace of carbon emissions, sea level is expected to rise one to four feet by 2100, and global temperatures to rise between 8 and 11 degrees (F). As a result, the globe will see increased drought and heat waves, heavy rain, stronger and more frequent storms, rising sea levels that destroy coastal areas, and disruptive human and environmental health disasters. In order to avoid these outcomes, carbon emissions must not only stop growing, but they must be cut in half: According to NASA (via GlobalChange.gov), “global mitigation actions would need to limit global carbon dioxide emissions to a peak of around 44 billion tons per year within the next 25 years and decline thereafter. In 2011, global emissions were around 34 billion tons, and have been rising by about 0.9 billion tons per year for the past decade. Therefore, the world is on a path to exceed 44 billion tons per year within a decade.”
And according to CNN’s coverage of the Paris Climate Agreement: “Capping the increase in global average temperatures to 2 degrees © was organizers’ key goal going into the COP21. That level of warming is measured as the average temperature increase since the Industrial Revolution. Failure to set a cap could result in superdroughts, deadlier heat waves, mass extinctions of plants and animals, megafloods and rising seas that could wipe some island countries off the map. Scientists and policy experts say hitting the 2 degrees Celsius threshold would require the world to move off fossil fuels between about 2050 and the end of the century. To reach the more ambitious 1.5 degrees Celsius goal, some researchers say the world will need to reach zero net carbon emissions sometime between about 2030 and 2050.”
There’s no doubt about it — these predictions are dire. And since the effects of climate change are incremental, rather than binary, it means that each person can actually make a difference by changing their own lifestyle to emit less carbon pollution. But it’s not just that your own carbon output that needs to be cut in half; it’s also the case that billions of people throughout the world who live in less developed nations and emit less carbon have to be prevented from developing any carbon-based economies, and to the extent they do, US reductions need to be even more severe in order to keep per capita emissions more equitable.
Since there’s no doubt about the science, each individual who considers herself a climate change non-denialist — or what is apparently the same thing: certain about climate change — should feel very comfortable answering this question: what have you done to cut your personal carbon emissions in half?
U.S. carbon emissions account for 15% of the global total, and 27% of that number comes from transportation. Have you attempted to reduce the amount of time you spend in a car by carpooling, walking short distances (one mile?) instead of driving, or choosing to live closer to work? When was the last time you decided against visiting a far-away friend or against a vacation destination because you couldn’t justify the carbon emissions? Have you discouraged a friend or a child from attending a remote university?
Do you open windows instead of using air conditioning? Do you wear warmer clothes instead of turning on the heat? Have you tried to limit electricity usage by using natural sunlight whenever possible for a lighting source, or by going to bed when the sun goes down?
Knowing, as you must, that cell phones and laptops contain environmentally disastrous batteries and heavy metals carbon-intensively pulled from the ground in Africa and Asia, have you abstained from updating your devices at the earliest possible moment? Have you refrained from making new car and appliance purchases for the same reason?
When was the last time you made yourself deliberately uncomfortable for the benefit of the planet?
If you answered “never,” you’re at least in good company. Take our national politicians, for example. Bernie Sanders, in a primary debate last year, called climate change our number one national security issue. And then he followed that up by insisting on low-carbon telecommuting and videoconferencing to campaign events… just kidding. He continued to travel, via climate-changing car and bus, all over the country with a large retinue. Hillary Clinton similarly talked from one side of her mouth about taking climate change seriously, but from the other side bragged about traveling more miles than any Secretary of State in history. Given the certainties of climate change, I would have thought she would be embarrassed by that fact. Not only was she not embarrassed, I can’t remember her, or anyone, being asked to justify their climate beliefs with their carbon-intensive lifestyle.
If climate change and its effects are going to be talked about as though they are certainties, then we should be seeing major lifestyle adjustments, at least among people who claim to be certain. Yet, somehow, climate change, like a folksy Christian God, seems never to ask more of people than they can handle. Isn’t it suspicious that climate change, while definitely being an imminent global apocalypse, apparently requires only small lifestyle changes that can easily be incorporated into the lifestyle of upper middle class Americans? Or is the climate change political movement only about asking other people to do things they don’t want to do?
If you believe that sea levels will rise one to four feet over the next eighty years, what do you think about people who have invested in real estate in Manhattan or in Miami? Are they optimistic that we will prevent global climate change? Or are they climate change denialists, who will get what they deserve when the sea inevitably swallows their property? The more interesting question is whether we’ll ever see the climate change faithful act consistently with their beliefs.
I would like to see climate change skepticism or denial countered by more than professions of faith. Anyone who has time to publicly insult editorial writers for questioning climate certainty should be able show how that certainty has played out in their own life. Or else why bother defending climate change certainty? Until our words are backed up by action, the vast majority of us will remain — if not climate change deniers — climate change hypocrites.
