We are living through two great meltdowns -- the credit crunch, and the climate crunch. The heating of the planet is now happening so fast it's hard to pluck a single event to fix on, but here's one. By the summer of 2013, the Arctic will be free of ice. How big an event it this? The Wall Street Crash hadn't happened for eighty years. The Arctic Crash hasn't happened for three million years: that's the last time there was watery emptiness at the top of the world. The Arctic is often described as the canary in the coal mine. As one Arctic researcher put it to me this week: the canary is dead. It's time to clear the mine, and run.
We now have higher levels of warming gases in the atmosphere than at any point in modern geological history. The last time they were higher than this was during the Ecocene, fifty million years ago. Sea levels were three hundred feet higher than today, and crocodiles swam at the poles.
So it seems strange that even here in Europe - the continent that has taken the evidence about global warming most seriously - many of our leaders are trying to use the credit crunch as an excuse for drive us deeper into the climate crunch. Last year, all the EU leaders agreed to carry out the bare minimum scientists say we need to prevent catastrophe. By the year 2020, they agreed to a 20 percent cut in carbon emissions, a 20 percent rise in energy efficiency, and to get 20 percent of our energy from renewables. This meant the EU could stroll into the talks for a successor treaty to Kyoto - which expires in 2012 - in the strongest position to persuade and pressure the world. The continent that gave the world Enlightenment and modern science was upholding those values - and offering our species the path out of a dead-end.
Until last week. At the EU summit to bail out the banks last week, several leaders began to quibble about bailing out the climate. The British government has been trying to punch holes in it, demanding exemptions for aviation and other accounting tricks. The Eastern European bloc - led by Polish PM Donald Tusk - said the deal was "too much" during a recession, but the Eastern Europeans need a Western European country to totally break away if they're going to break the deal. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi took a break from finger-printing gypsies to say: "We don't think this is the moment to push forward on our own like Don Quixote. We have time."
But time is exactly what we don't have. The key to understanding why lies in grasping the difference between a two degree celcius rise in global temperatures and a three degree rise. At first glance, neither sounds like a big deal. If you go out for a picnic and the temperature rises by three degrees, you take off your jacket. But if your body heats up one or two degrees, you get sick and take to your bed. If it heats by three degrees and doesn't go back, you die. The ecosystem isn't a picnic; it's more like your body. Small variations in global temperatures have vast consequences. The last Ice Age was only six degrees colder than today. A global rise of just 0.8 degrees has melted the Arctic.
Soon, we will have belched so many warming gases into the atmosphere that a two degree rise will be locked-in and certain. That condemns Bangladesh and the islands of the South Pacific to drowning. But if we choose, we can stop there, and stabilise the climate at this higher temperature.
But if we go beyond two degrees, the climate begins to unravel, and the brakes won't work. At three degrees, almost all the world's ice is gone, and so it stops reflecting a third of the Sun's ray back into space - making the world hotter. At three degrees, the Amazon rainforest burns down, releasing all its stored carbon - making the world hotter. At three degrees, the Siberian peat-bogs melt and release vast quantities of methane into the atmosphere - making the world hotter. So three degrees turns inexorably to four and five and six. Screw the grandchildren and the polar bears: we're on course to heat by three degrees in my lifetime.
I wish this wasn't true. I wish the deniers were right: I'd be on the first plane to Honolulu. But we can't live for long in an euphoric dream. We have to face reality: two degrees is the point of no return, and we're about to hit it.
The collision of these two crunches could be a boon. Just as the banking system imploded when it was left unregulated, the current carbon-spewing economy is on course to ecologically implode. The path out of both crunches is the same: concerted state action and re-regulation. To get out of the credit crunch, we need a big package of job creation and economic stimulus. To get out of the climate crunch, we need an army of millions of new workers - and billions in public spending - to insulate every home, construct millions of new renewable energy sources, and work on endless innovations that help us to decarbonise. See any overlap? Europe would get a head-start in green technologies - the great boom-market of the twenty-first century, if the world sees sense. The US under a new President Obama could do the same - if it's smart.
The belief we can't deal with global warming because we need to pursue growth is pulverised by a Stern fact: global warming will smother economic growth. When the British government commissioned the economist Sir Nicholas Stern to study the economic impact of Weather of Mass Destruction, he found that warming could slash 20 percent off the global economy in my lifetime - while it costs just 3 percent of GDP to stop it now. People who won't stop warming for the sake of growth are like a man who won't stop his house burning down because he makes a living toasting marshmallows on the flames: soon, he'll have no living, and no house.
Yes, we could choose business-as-usual; even this continent could give up and give in. Then, as the climatologist Professor Marty Hoffert says: "Somebody will visit in a few hundred million years and find there were some intelligent beings who lived here for a while, but they just couldn't handle the transition from being hunter-gatherers to high technology."
Feeling pessimistic yet? Don't be. There is another way. This is, perversely, a dazzling time to be alive: every human being who ever lives will deal with the decisions we make here. If we disregard the voices of denial, Europe - and each one of us - has a chance to do something extraordinary. We could be the people who saw this great threat to our species coming and remade our societies to stop it, showing the US and the world it can be done. The story of Europe's 2020 vision could be heroic - but only if we fight now to save it from the vandals.
Johann Hari writes for the Independent newspaper. To read more of his articles, click here.
See my profile for a plan for solar wind replacement of 90% of fossil fuel use in ten years for 1T$. Cheaper than war or hedge fund bailouts. Free fuel forever. No nuke bomb and forever waste proliferation.
Finally, as I mentioned above, I can't stand hypocrisy. The Human Caused Global Warming (Yet The Planet Is Cooling) fanatics have, as their leaders, two of the biggest hypocrites on the planet. Human Caused Global Warming (Yet The Planet Is Cooling) is a religion and it's "gods" are out there telling everyone that the world is going to end and that EVERYONE must tighten their belts and give up this and that and this and that or the world will end.. And yet, these "gods" are out there building spaceships (with the money that was supposed to go to help the planet) to take a HANDFUL of TOURISTS into space. And driving around in fancy limos and flying around in fancy private jets, all the while preaching that the "normal" people need to give up their necessities for the good of the planet..
How ANYONE can be con'ed by the likes of Gore or Branson is simply beyond me..
Michale....
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I realize that every time there is a post about global warming you trot out the same tripe about cyclicity and short term cooling.
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That "short term cooling" has wiped out the entire increase in temps that the Human Caused Global Warming (Yet The Planet Is Cooling) fanatics use to try and cause fear and panic..
Why can't you realize the complete and utter illogic of your theory.
How can there be Human Caused Global Warming when the planet is cooling??
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Everyone that pays attention knows the denial talking points. What I don't get is your angle? You are obviously not a climate scientists. Why is scientific consensus equated to left wing hysteria in your mind?
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Several reasons..
First off the hysterical Left decry and castigate Fear Mongering, yet they use it perfectly when it suits their purpose. That's hypocrisy and I hate hypocrisy.
Secondly, there is NO "consensus" amongst REAL scientists. The list of REAL scientists who buys into the con job that is Human Caused Global Warming (Yet The Planet Is Cooling) is shrinking nearly daily..
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The IPCC is a POLITICAL orgainization, pure and simple.
Any conclusions coming out of the IPCC are POLITICALLY based, not science based.
You proved it yourself with your "consensus" statement.
"Consensus" is a POLITICAL term, not a scientific one.
Remember, there was "consensus" that the Earth was flat at one time..
Consensus doesn't mean diddley squat when it comes to REAL science..
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Al Gore is just a spokesman.
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And the "Spokesman" for the Human Caused Global Warming (Yet The Planet Is Cooling) doesn't seem to be TOO concerned about it, if he is still running around in private jets and limos, spending $300 million to "TALK", despite having made the claim over and over that "the time for talk is done."...
So, if the SPOKESPERSON isn't willing to "walk the walk" in the face of this "imminent" catastrophe, what does that say about the so-called "imminent" catastrophe??
Al Gore reminds me of those tele-evangelists who preach and preach about being good and pure and frugal, yet in private is boffin' anything in a skirt and spending millions on yachts and homes.
Hard to find a guy like that or his message credible, ya know??
Michale.....
Says who? You? What are your credentials? Every credible science agency has now agreed that green house gasses are contributing to global warming and lowering them will reduce global warming.
Your idea of "credible" is the UN IPCC, right???
Remember, the UN is the same orgainization that made 9 BILLION dollars a year scamming the Iraqi Oil For Food program..
The same UN that sent teams down to an African nation to DISARM the rebels, but ended up SELLING them weapons..
Is that your "credible" source??
Let me ask you one simple question.
If Human Caused Global Warming (Yet The Planet Is Cooling) is REALLY the imminent catastrophe you seem to believe it is, why is Al Gore spending the $300 million he made on an AD CAMPAIGN!???
Wouldn't that money be better served actually installing Solar Power systems into 30,000 homes??
Why did Richard Branson pay $1.5 BILLION dollars to HIMSELF?? That kind of money could take 750 THOUSAND gas guzzling, pollution causing vehicles off the roadways and put 750 THOUSAND hybrid vehicles on the roads instead..
Why is Al Gore and Richard Branson using that money to make themselves richer, instead of actually doing SOMETHING to actually HELP the planet???
Can you answer that??
Of course you can't...
And THAT is the answer in and of itself...
Michale.....
The science is here and the policy has been implemented. There are working models and national strategies developed in today's world that can be applied in the United States.
Let's face it: this particular planet has been orbiting this particular star for a VERY long time, and it does not need human beings to "save" it. It could just as easily obliterate every single human being from its surface and then continue to orbit this same star for another ten-million years.
Our actual knowledge is limited... we don't know too much about the actual cyclic history of the environment on this planet. We don't know what's "normal."
What we DO know is, "how fragile we are." We know that this planet COULD obliterate every single human (or at least make life very miserable for them...) and nevertheless continue to orbit. We know that, whether or not we save "the planet," we'd better save "ourselves."
That's not going to be easy, though. Accountants quickly devised a futures-market in so-called "carbon credits," but that won't save anything. Public officials will happily spend public money to garner a vote, but that won't save anyone.
We can change the "supply" side, or we can change the "demand," or both. Right now, the "demand" side is easier, but "supply" is a profit-making business. So, "guess who wins?"
We can't just turn off the lights. (The laptops that we use to pontificate would be dead within twelve hours, while we either shiver or sweat until we die.) That's not the point; never was the point.
I would add tax credit for individuals and companies that install solar and wind, or that add more efficiency.
There are very real and very pressing reasons to go "GREEN"..
Dependency on foreign oil...
Health detriments from pollution..
Either of those, in and of themselves, are very good reasons to invest in alternate energy technologies.
You will get no argument from me on those counts.
But when the hysterical Left takes fear-mongering and hypocrisy to new heights to con people...
Well, I just draw the line there...
Michale.....
And that the most reliable long-term climate forecaster, which incidentally doesn't rely on bogus GIGO computer models, has predicted that the cooling trend is expected to continue for another couple decades..
In other words, as has been well established, climate is cyclic..
We're now in a cooling cycle...
Michale.....
Christ said over and over that we should repect/love existence as our life depended on it.
As for "Cause" and "Effect"....
Let me ask you..
What would be the "EFFECT" of a man sitting in a dingy in the middle of the Atlantic ocean and taking a piss??
The "EFFECT" would be nearly non-existent, no??
Now, consider that the Earth AND it's climate is 4.5 BILLION years old.. And, consider that mankind has only be heavily industrialized for the last 80 years or so..
So, doing the math, we have that human kind has been heavily industrialized for 0.000001% of the age of the earth..
And you are trying to tell me that, in that MINISCULE, that PINPOINT of time that human kind can INADVERTENTLY, destroy the Earth's Climate???
Is that what you are seriously trying to say???
Michale.....
Your comments of the damage of man is such a short time is very significant and makes my point
http://www.physorg.com/news10143.html
We need a homogenious view and action that will make the earth and mankind healthy. Solutions need to be complementary and not mutually exclusive. The cause and effect of all actions must be inbalance with all facets of living.
We can discuss the solutions in this light, only if we control of greed, self perpetuating, Machiavellism, and mutual exclusiveness of the "end justify the means" for a few and not the many approaches. This is how we maintain our individual freedoms
Back to the environment, it is my gut feeling we are too late but we should do all we can to save the planet for all forms of life