Clear and Present Danger: A Conversation With Nobel Laureate Steve Chu on the Risks of Climate Change
By The Climate Community | November 3, 2008 | In: Business, Science, Policy, Media, Social & NGOs
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Fighting Climate Change – Worth the Cost
Professor Chu likes to compare the climate change problem to that of a homeowner who discovers that his house has faulty wiring that may cause electrical fires and needs an expensive repair. Most of us would ask for a second opinion. But much of the climate "debate" to date has been the equivalent of scouring the town for a hundred opinions in the hope that one engineer will tell us we don't need to do anything. And many of the courses of action proposed have been the equivalent of dealing with the problem by buying fire insurance or investing in a set of fire extinguishers that can help us fight the fire – but won't prevent it from happening in the first place.
What most of us would do when faced with this situation is the intuitively obvious solution – put off the things we might have liked to do with the money, and do what it takes to make the repairs. We wouldn't take risks with our own lives and the lives of our children.
We face the same choice now: to go on living as we are, looking for lower-cost options today that will help fight the fire when it starts, or to address the risks in the house we live in, and make the repairs we can, to make the house safe for ourselves and our descendents. In our houses, we think these things are sound investments. We can adopt the same attitude for the planet.
Reasonable investments now – in energy efficiency, new technology, new sources of power, and better infrastructure – can make a dramatic difference for the future. Just as in our houses, making these investments will require changes of all of us – in our behaviors, our jobs, and our attitudes. But these changes are minimal compared to the dramatic changes that would confront us and our descendents if we do nothing.
After all, if your house burns down, you can go live elsewhere. But in the end, there's nowhere else to go for the billions of people living on a dramatically changed planet Earth.
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Comments feed@Fiona Smythe:
It is funny to note, that those who believe, that the climate crisis springs form overpopulation always seems to think that it is somebody else, who is in excess...
Reducing population is not a project by itself. All studies have shown, that population will regulate itself on basis of the social conditions present, the access to abortion and contraceptives and other demands long advanced by the progressive womens movement.
In Denmark the largest emitter Maersk Aps is accountable for the same emissions as the rest of the country in total. It is obvious that people feel alienated by suggestions, that the climate crisis is their personal fault.
What puzzles me is that a summit like this one is promoting business-based solutions to climate change. Big business have known about these problems for years, but have not changed, politicians have known about this for years but have not reacted. How can we be amazed, that the public seems to view this problem with an apathetic stance?
This is not the time for promoting business based solutions, but for arguing, that the affected parties - the social movements and unions - should take a leading role in the restructuring of society in order to move towards a society not based upon the exploitation of nature.
I implore researchers like Chu to turn their attention towards the movements against climate change, the ordinary people organizing in order to call for a sustainable solution and offer their support to these movements instead of trying to affect politicians and businessmen (and -women) who care only about the profits, that can be reaped from this crisis.
The largest corporations have driven society into a major economic crisis. We can not trust them to solve the climatic crisis, which is just another face of the global crisis of society.
This is an enlightening and disturbing report. I'm pleased that Dr. Chu will be put in a position to address these problems. I'm always surprised, though, that one of the immediate and obvious solutions to the future increase in carbon levels is not mentioned. It seems obvious that reducing the number of people we add to the feedback loop will concurrently reduce the production of greenhouse gases. In addition to technological and behavioral solutions, we should be calling for an immediate, voluntary reduction in the number of children families are having.
We do not, as some people say, need more studies to determine if global warming due to human activity is a reality. Nobody who is not suicidal would seal themselves in their garage with their car running. Why? Because you are introducing toxic compounds into a closed system at an accelerated rate which would result in your death. Our planet is a closed system. A sealed garage. We are introducing at an accelerated rate several compounds that, while not all toxic, could ultimately have a toxic effect if not checked. This is junior science.
We don't need studies, we need action.
Converting to a less toxic economy doesn't mean we need to live like barbarians. We can have all the mod-cons and a healthy planet. There is no harm in this.
On the other hand, the potential harm of the route we are on could spell the demise of nearly all the life on this wondrous planet. Is it worth the risk when all the alternative will cost is cooperative effort?
The reason that many people do not believe the "climate change story" is because many people on the climate change band wagon have twisted the facts and have out right lied about the potential effects of climate change in order to scare them to obtain their support. The fact of the matter is nobody on this plant is really sure what increased CO2 levels will or will not do to our planet's environment, and the truth of the matter is it is the uncertainty that bothers people.
We need to put our efforts in to the science and stop all of the speculation. We need to migrate from I "feel" climate change is going to happen to using the available data for developing our understanding of the potential problem. We can not debate the historical knoweldge that significant climate change has occured on our planet in its history long before humans came along or even existed in large numbers.
There may be natural forces at work in our planets' and/or sun's systems that have nothing to do with us and will occur with or without us. We just need to understand the difference before we start making policy. Scientist have been wrong many times before. Are they right this time? Rarely do we get it right on the first try.
Thanks for this post. I'm reading this after I heard Dr. Chu was appointed head of the DOE by Obama. I'm glad to see Dr. Chu understands global warming so well. A great darkness is lifting in Washington. Obviously, Obama and Chu will need more support from the general population in the US than has been observed to be there so far to do much, but what a difference from anyone in the Bush administration.
The recent reports of methane boiling out of Siberian lakes and methane clathrate outbursts in wide swaths of the Arctic Ocean indicate things may be even worse than Dr. Chu thinks. Methane releases of this type may be kicking off a feedback loop that will make rising carbon dioxide levels look insignificant.