Clear and Present Danger: A Conversation With Nobel Laureate Steve Chu on the Risks of Climate Change

Published by CITRIS and the Copenhagen Climate Council

Prepared by Diane Alexander with Mark Huberty and Nina Kelsey for the Copenhagen Climate Council and CITRIS (Center for Information Technology in the Interests of Society)-BRIE (Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy)

Former Vice President Al Gore is well known as a passionate, outspoken voice on global warming. If what he's saying sounds alarming, then the remarks of Dr. Steve Chu, the calm, straightforward, rational scientist, will be even scarier.

Dr. Chu is a Nobel Prize-winning professor of physics and molecular biology and Director of the famed Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is quietly passionate about the challenge and dangers of climate change, and has reoriented his research to pursue work on the subject. He understands it is difficult for people to see climate change as a clear and present danger, and is trying to challenge conventional wisdom and teach people to see how global warming is a crisis for our society. He is disturbed that despite the highly publicized release of the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for global warming education, the public's grasp of the crisis seems weak.

In our conversations with Dr. Chu, we discussed the most recent IPCC report, and why there is reason to believe that even this "gold standard" document may understate the problem, the magnitude of some potential effects, and the ways it will affect the public.

The IPCC and the Climate Debate

When we spoke with Dr. Chu, the first thing we asked was his take on the most recent report published by the IPCC. This body was established by the United Nations to provide governments and policy makers with objective and up-to-date information on global warming. The Panel reviews and assesses the latest findings, and provides extensive reports at regular intervals that summarize the state of knowledge on climate change.

The fourth and most recent report – released in 2007 – made headlines around the world: "The Debate is Over." The IPCC concluded it was very likely – defined as a 90% chance – that the global warming we are observing is caused by humans. Dr. Chu, however, believes that the attribution of climate change is essentially a settled question. He feels that we must instead focus the public's attention on the regional and local impacts of climate change, because these are the changes that will affect their lives.

Dr. Chu clearly agrees with the information stated in the report. He knows it is important for people to understand that the warming the IPCC talks about is not hypothetical. Eleven of the last 12 years (1995-2006) rank among the warmest years in global surface temperature since 1850. Glaciers and snow cover have declined, and ice sheets from Greenland and parts of Antarctica are melting. The ocean has been absorbing more than 80% of the heat added to the climate system, yet the average temperature of the ocean has increased up to a depth of 3,000 meters, causing seawater to expand and contributing to sea level rise.

As a consequence of global warming, hot waves and heavy precipitation are expected to increase in frequency and severity. Tropical cyclones will likely become more intense, faster, and carry more water into vulnerable coastal communities. Precipitation in general will increase in high latitudes and decrease in subtropical areas.

An interesting turn of the conversation came when we began to discuss what climate change will mean for everyday people. It is clear that reports of changing global averages do not impact people in the same way as a prediction of what will happen to them. Effects like these have long been difficult to pin down, but advances in climate science are starting to give us more specific information.

According to the IPCC report, nearly all European regions will be negatively affected; climate change is expected to exacerbate regional differences in the continent's natural resources and assets. Flash floods, coastal flooding, and erosion are likely to increase. Mountainous areas face glacier retreat, reduced snow cover, and extensive extinction, hurting the tourism industry. In North America, winter flooding and summer droughts are expected, intensifying water distribution problems in already water-stressed areas. Heat waves will put elderly populations at risk, and high-value coastal communities face increasing losses with the increase in storm intensity. These trends are backed up by the recently observed patterns of change.

Dr. Chu believes that this type of information could help transform public opinion, helping them to understand that the vague notion of global warming could result in specific problems close to home.

And, as both Dr. Chu and the IPCC report point out, these risks are not going to go away. Our best estimates of climate sensitivity tell us that the warming is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C, and will most likely fall in the range of 2°C to 4.5°C. For the next 20 years, warming of around 0.2°C per decade is predicted across a wide range of projected economic and political scenarios. Even if greenhouse gas concentrations had been stabilized in 2000, the temperature would continue to increase by 0.1°C per decade. Due to the immense thermal momentum of the ocean, warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries.  Even the best-case, lowest-emission scenario suggests an increase of 1.8°C, while the best estimate for the high scenario results in an increase of 4°C or more.

But what do these numbers really mean? How can the public put these figures into perspective? Compounding this, according to Dr. Chu the IPCC report is actually a conservative document. This statement has the power to fundamentally change the tone of the discussion, if only people would listen.

Ready to Be Convinced, But Not to Act

Of course, this sets up the next important question: Why aren't people listening? Alternatively, why aren't they acting? This is one problem to which Dr. Chu can't seem to find an answer. He knows that the magnitude of the crisis we are headed into is overwhelming. Yet despite all these daunting problems, we are not helpless in the face of climate change.

There are a host of steps we can take today that could make big differences in the coming decades, such as investing in infrastructure changes in developing countries and building more energy-efficient buildings. Long-term measures suggested by the IPCC include investment in research and development for clean energy, information campaigns and financial incentives for energy efficiency. Tradable permits, taxes and regulations and carbon pricing policies can all create incentives for producers and consumers to invest in low-emission products and technologies. But governments around the world will not take these steps unless they can be convinced climate change is a clear and present danger, one that demands immediate action.

Dr. Chu reminded us at this point that there are some countries currently taking steps to be green without compromising their livelihood. There is no reason to believe that decreasing greenhouse gas emissions must stunt economic growth. Europe and Japan have had great success with energy efficiency and emissions stabilization without suffering reduced levels of well-being.

Still, containing climate change will require a level of global political will that we have not yet achieved. While many countries have begun taking steps to remedy climate change, those steps are not yet widespread or aggressive enough to actually turn the tide. And while it is critical that developing countries follow more developed countries in this effort, developing countries quite reasonably ask why they should have to take on the technological uncertainties of moving to a green economy when many rich nations refuse to do the same. Informed experts like Dr. Chu have puzzled over this: If we believe in global warming, why aren't we heeding the IPCC's warning and rushing to do something about it?

He raises an important question: Why has political will been lacking? The United States has been particularly disappointing in this respect, so it's reasonable to look there first for the answer. The frustrating lack of interest in climate change that we see in the American population doesn't appear to be a problem of basic knowledge. Despite the controversy that has often surrounded climate change and its reporting, polls show the American public coming around to the belief that climate change is real. If these polls are accurate, the populace understands that climate change exists.

What they don't appear to know, and what experts like Dr. Chu want to make more visible, is how devastating and personal the effects of climate change could become. In a recent poll, 71% said there is "solid evidence" of global warming, but only 44% called it a "very serious problem." When asked to rank global warming against a range of other policy priorities, 47% of Democrats, 38% of Independents and just 12% of Republicans rated it a top priority.[1] So their basic knowledge isn't translating into the kind of political drive needed to push fast policy action, or the personal motivation needed to change individual behavior. Consumers in the United States have the least "green" habits in the world in terms of energy use, transportation, travel, and goods, according to National Geographic and polling firm GlobeScan.[2] And if this is how Americans are thinking, polls show that many in developed countries are right there with them. A recent online study of 46 countries by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that the bigger a nation's wealth and carbon footprint, the less its residents care about global warming.

The logical conclusion seems to be that developed-world publics believe in man-made global warming, but aren't yet personally scared. They know it is happening, but they don't yet know the magnitude of the problem – how bad it could be for them. On the face of it, this seems reasonable. Very few people have the time or energy to read the IPCC's thousand-page tome; even if they did, droughts, storms, and floods are unpleasant, and may threaten individual livelihoods, but humanity has suffered them throughout history. In the context of a daily weather report, an increase of 2-3°C (3.6-7.2°F) in average temperatures may not sound like much. Moreover, the time scale is the wrong one to inspire anxiety: People are much more likely to respond to a clear and present danger, which global warming does not necessarily seem to be.

In reality, however, climate change amounts to a significant shock to ecosystems around the world. The ramifications of increasing temperatures will be felt at home as well as abroad, but if we wait until then it will be too late. Experts such as Dr. Chu tell us - indeed, they're desperate to find ways to convince more of us – that climate change carries with it an incredible, unstoppable momentum, and we must convince people to act now.

Why We Should Be Scared

If the reason we aren't taking action is because we don't understand the magnitude of the problem, what is that magnitude? Dr. Chu pointed us here towards the Stern Review and certain parts of the IPCC that have gone unnoticed and underappreciated. According to these sources, an increase of 2-3°C (3.6-7.2°F) means significant changes in water availability, a doubling of damage costs from hurricanes in the United States, a possible collapse of the Amazon rainforest, and failing crops and increased hunger around the world.[3] Those scenarios are projected for the 450-650 ppm C0₂e range; researchers say that we are already at the equivalent of 430 ppm.[4]

In addition, global emissions levels may actually be increasing faster than scientists expected. The Washington Post recently announced that in 2007 emissions outpaced the IPCC's worst business as usual predictions, putting us on track for temperature increases of more than 6.1°C by the end of the century.[5] And making all of this more likely are the numerous and often overlooked feedback effects that intensify and accelerate these changes. Can we really be apathetic to that?

Moreover, despite all the press to the contrary, Dr. Chu repeatedly reminded us that the IPCC reports are conservative documents. The consensus-seeking process of writing by committee used by the IPCC results in only using information and accepting conclusions that are beyond reproach. As a result, the "alarming" conclusions in the document tend to underestimate changes that will occur in a warmer world. Objections from China and Saudi Arabia caused a statement that the impact of human activity on the Earth's heat budget exceeds that of the sun by fivefold to be dropped – despite the fact that, according to a lead author, the difference is really a factor of ten.[6]

Thawing of the Permafrost – a Double Dose of Carbon

During our conversation with Dr. Chu, he directed us towards certain aspects of climate change that he believed were extremely important but underrepresented in the press. Feedback mechanisms came up multiple times in the conversation, due to their potential to speed up climate change and create a situation where we lose our ability to keep up and respond. It is a problem that future IPCC studies will need to better understand. Could the Earth's response to global warming itself cause additional global warming?

More specifically, Dr. Chu talked about the thawing of Arctic permafrost. Permafrost covers 22% of exposed land in the arctic and boreal regions of the Northern Hemisphere, and remains frozen for years at a time. The permafrost contains more than twice the carbon present in the atmosphere today. As global temperatures increase, the permafrost thaws, and the carbon trapped in its soils becomes the food of microbes and bacteria. In turn, those microbes emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So as the permafrost thaws, a massive store of carbon could begin to enter the atmosphere, compounding the problems of climate change caused by human activity.

According to Dr. Chu, scientists aren't sure at exactly what temperature this process will accelerate, making it hard to attach probabilities or timescales to the problem. This was one of the reasons it was not highlighted in the IPCC report. But the decomposition resulting from thawing permafrost is one of the most significant potential feedbacks from terrestrial ecosystems to the atmosphere in a warming climate.

Here's how it works. Carbon is released into the atmosphere from thawing permafrost due to its decomposition by soil microbes, with instances of fire also playing an important role. Both of these processes, microbial decomposition and fire frequency, are predicted to accelerate in a warmer climate. While mechanisms such as increased plant growth and changes in albedo can partially offset some effects of thawing permafrost on climate, the loss of carbon to the atmosphere is likely to represent a substantial source of additional carbon emissions over the next century.

Global warming will result in a net loss of permafrost on both regional and global scales. Experts have projected a release of 0.5-1 Pg of carbon per year from permafrost zone ecosystems. This forecast is similar in magnitude to carbon emissions from the much more publicized process of land-use change, which is estimated to be 1-2 Pg carbon per year. [7]

Unfortunately, predicting accurately the magnitude and effect of thawing permafrost is extremely difficult. Yet, experts estimate that up to 100 Pg of carbon could be released from thawing permafrost by the end of the century. This amount is roughly 17 times larger than current American annual CO₂ emissions, and approximately equivalent to 100 years of Indian emissions at present levels. Others have calculated a potential release of 40 Pg of carbon over four decades if 10% of the carbon stock in Siberia thawed to 5°C, or 48 Pg C from Canadian permafrost over the course of the century if average air temperature increased by 4°C.[8]

Global circulation models are just starting to incorporate simple permafrost dynamics, but cannot completely and accurately calculate the carbon cycle in thawing permafrost. This means that the threat of thawing permafrost, despite its potential to release huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, has gone largely unnoticed and underappreciated. And it's not the only such effect to slide in under the radar.

Dying Forests and Vanishing Water

Another major concern raised by Dr. Chu was water availability, and its effects on human and natural populations. Rising temperatures will stress the global ecosystem that we rely on to supply our water and support the farms that grow our food. Water resources are particularly sensitive to global warming.

Higher global temperatures will cause more vigorous cycling of water between the atmosphere, land and ocean, and, at first glance, one would expect more snow and rainfall. Yet sudden shifts in regional weather patterns are also expected, where droughts will occur in one region of the world while flooding may plague another region. We depend on specific kinds of water to show up at particular times, to support irrigation and fishing, to store water for human use in dry periods, and to keep natural hazards like forest fires to a minimum. Snow in the winter stores water until it melts, providing water for the drier summer months. Extended melt seasons, starting in early spring and continuing through mid-summer, provide water for both fish migration and irrigation. Excess water flows have allowed us to keep some behind dams, providing power generation in addition to irrigation. The delicate balance between hydropower, irrigation, and fish in places like Washington State would turn into a choice: fish runs, agriculture, or electricity?

According to Dr. Chu, climate change could seriously disrupt this fragile relationship between water, seasons, ecosystems, and human activity. Warmer average temperatures would reduce winter snowfall. What snow did fall would melt earlier, due to longer warm seasons. Lower summer water flows would result, since the meltwater would have passed through the rivers in spring instead. And as freshwater rivers dried up, these problems would multiply. Barnett et al (2004) estimated that for a 1-2°C increase in average surface temperatures, the river systems of the western United States would no longer be able to meet demand for water for irrigation, hydropower, and drinking water.

Germans may see decreased water in the Rhine and Elbe rivers, which supply water to the industrial regions of West Germany and the agricultural heartlands of the East.[9] The Sacramento basin, which supports both Central Valley agriculture and drinking water for San Francisco, could see dramatic increases in salinity. In addition to making the water unfit for human consumption or irrigation without expensive pre-treatment, it could also cause the collapse of ecosystems depending on Sacramento River fresh water.[10]

For much of California, water availability is tied to the health of its mountains, and the forests of the Sierra Nevada foothills are already showing signs of dying off as temperatures rise. The carbon equivalent concentration in the atmosphere right now is about 430 ppm. At 550 ppm, some projections suggest that 50-75% of these forests will die.[11] Those forests help guarantee the California water supply, filter carbon from the air, and support the biodiversity of one of North America's largest mountain ranges.

The Sierra snowpack, which supplies water to much of San Francisco and Los Angeles, could decline by 30-70%. Those trees that survive will have different problems. Higher winter temperatures won't kill off as many pests, leaving them better prepared to attack plants again in the spring. The pine forests of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California have already experienced higher infestation rates from pine beetles, which used to die off during the winter months.

Trees will also become less effective at storing water. Though carbon dioxide is the major man-made cause of global warming, water vapor that naturally exists in the atmosphere stores more heat. As temperatures rise, trees, like the rest of us, will perspire more, releasing more water vapor into the air and storing more heat in the atmosphere. Here is yet another feedback mechanism that will compound the problem of climate change, and make its effects worse.

Rising temperatures will put added strain on those already living in water-poor regions. The destruction of Sierra alpine forests and the loss of Sierra snowpack will end the era of green lawns in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The death of lawns in LA will be followed by the death of agriculture in the Central Valley, one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. Australia will face additional problems as storm tracks shift polewards and take their rainfall away from what is already the world's driest continent.[12]

Today, roughly 1.4-1.6 billion people lack access to fresh water. By 2050, that number could increase to between 2.9 and 6.9 billion.[13] As access to fresh water becomes more difficult, other pressing problems will become less tractable. The Millennium Development goals, designed to deal with the worst problems of poverty – hunger, education, child mortality, malaria, and environmental stability – are all affected by reduced water availability.

Feeding Ourselves on a Warmer Planet

Of course, Dr. Chu was quick to remind us that a decrease in water availability means more than dying lawns and shorter showers. Water issues go hand in hand with food issues. All these changes will have serious impacts on the way we feed ourselves. Some climate skeptics suggest that global warming could be good for world hunger – think of all the cold parts of the world that could now grow food!

Unfortunately, the research suggests otherwise. Crop yields are very sensitive to changes in growing season length and temperature. Crops depend on irrigation, which in turn depends on the availability of fresh water.

But the problems of food supply in the face of global climate change go beyond even these serious issues. The effects are complex; plants benefit from rising levels of carbon dioxide, but those benefits appear to be offset by rising temperatures. Plants certainly consume carbon dioxide as part of the photosynthesis process. But, as temperatures rise, plant photosynthesis becomes less efficient. Scientists are still learning more about how these effects balance each other.

Plants also respond to temperature stresses with built-in survival mechanisms. They may reduce their size, their rate of growth, or their production of the fruits, grains, and seeds that humans use for food. These effects appear to be much worse at the lower latitudes where most developing countries – those most sensitive to changing food supplies - are found. In the 2-3°C range, estimates place grain crop yield losses at 0-15%, depending upon the success of adaptation.

For developed countries at higher latitudes, grain yields may rise or fall by up to 5% depending on adaptation.[14] Much above a temperature change of 3°C, however, crop yields decline rapidly across the board. Some recent research suggests that in the most conservative of the IPCC temperature scenarios, yields of crops like corn and soybeans could fall by as much as 30-40%.[15] Worse, higher summer temperatures also increase the chances of crop blights.

Furthermore, rising temperatures bring with them a rising frequency of extreme weather events - droughts, high-temperature days, stronger storms, flooding, and heavy short-term precipitation. The stresses these events place on the agricultural system as a whole put crops and food production at risk. Droughts reduce water availability and threaten crops that depend on irrigation. Storms and floods can damage or destroy crops, as the residents of the Mississippi Basin found during the summer of 2008. Heavy precipitation erodes cropland. Cumulatively, these effects have the potential to strain the world's food supply over the next century.

Economic development is helping more and more people get access to stable, plentiful food; climate change could reverse some of those gains, leading to an additional 40-170 million people at risk of hunger by the end of the century. More and more of these people will come from regions already at risk of hunger. Food supplies in sub-Saharan Africa, already one of the world's poorest regions, will become even more unstable than they are today.

The Limits of Adaptation

When talking to colleagues and students about climate change, Dr. Chu hears a lot about the potential of adaptation. After all, human beings are pretty flexible, and we have a fairly long track record of shaping the natural world to our needs. Might we be right to think that we can deal with a few more hurricanes a year, or a few more hot days in the summer? We also know that the climate predictions come with uncertainties; couldn't the uncertainties mean the problem is less bad than we think?

This elicits quite a strong reaction from Dr. Chu. Adaptation is not, he says, a productive way to think about climate change. In terms of uncertainties, they go both ways: the chance of much worse effects increases as well. The new evidence we've discussed here tells us that the climate is far more sensitive than we originally thought, and changing faster than was initially predicted. He points to what scientists estimate as the "danger point" of greenhouse gases (GHG) over time, and demonstrates that it has been steadily dropping as scientists gather new information.

Today's carbon dioxide levels are at around 384 ppm, which combined with other GHG puts us at around 430 ppm CO₂e. Passing the 400 ppm mark places us in the middle of dangerous territory. Most experts, including Dr. Chu, now agree that if the CO₂e goes above 500 pmm we run a serious risk of setting off dangerous positive feedback mechanisms, where the Earth's response to a warming world would cause it to evolve in a way that would further increase warming.

It is true that much of the devastation caused by climate change will be felt in poorer, developing nations, particularly in the early stages. Developed countries have more resources, more resilient economies, and depend less on agriculture - the industry that will be hit the hardest. But those living in industrialized countries are facing not just inconvenience but major hardship of their own. According to Dr. Chu it is not outside the realm of possibility that climate change will cause not just a collapse in agriculture, but of our entire economic system.

Greenhouse gas levels on the scale we've discussed would cause drastic changes that are completely outside our realm of experience. Dr. Chu doesn't know how to make people understand: global warming doesn't just mean a shorter ski season; it means there will not be enough water to drink. The energy problem is not that gas prices are too high; it's that they're too low to provide enough incentive for innovation and change. Numerous biofeedback mechanisms exist that threaten us with the prospect of sudden, unpredictable and irreversible disasters. We are facing a profoundly altered world, one that will be greatly and permanently transformed if we choose to continue down our current path.

As for humanity's famous adaptability – it's really not a given. These changes are on a much bigger scale than anything we've seen before. The effects of global warming are right up there with the Ice Age in terms of their potential disruption to human society. At temperature changes of just 2-4°C – in the mid to low range of what is predicted – we will face the onset of irreversible melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, as well as the collapse of part or all of the Amazon rainforest.

Warmer temperatures will enlarge the range of disease spreading animals and the bacteria, viruses and fungi they carry. Deadly diseases we currently think of as troubles of tropical areas – like malaria or Dengue fever – could become developed-world problems.

Moreover, climate change means that a large fraction of ecosystems will be unable to maintain their current form. We will see extensive species loss that threatens more than just the polar bears. Coral reefs, and their ability to support fish populations, will be decimated. Wetlands will dry up, and entire ecosystems will cease to function.

With an increase of just 2.5°C, bird habitat in the United States will be cut in half. Changes of 2.6-3.7°C will make 30-40% of mammals in South Africa endangered or extinct. Coral reefs provide habitat for 25% of all marine species and support up to 5% of global fishing. Warming ocean temperatures disrupt the balance of coral reefs, eventually causing their death. As reefs die off, they erode, putting the fish that depend on them - and the people who depend on the fish - at danger.[16]

At 1.6-3.6°C of temperature increase, 27% of the salmon runs in the western United States are in danger of disappearing. These populations are already under pressure - salmon fishing was suspended for many western North American rivers in the 2008 season.[17]

These are important changes; any one of them alone seems like a problem. Yet people don't seem to be able to grasp that global warming means facing all of them at once. A decline in fish populations might be tragic to environmentalists but merely annoying to first-world household cooks and restaurant-goers; a decline in fish population, coupled with declines in staple crops such as rice and wheat, and wedded to the collapse of agricultural centers like California's Central Valley mean global famine that may even spill into parts of the developed world, and will certainly create massive populations of desperate people within the developing world. These are the kinds of conditions, noted Dr. Chu, which create resource wars, revolutions, invasions, and terrorism.

There is more: a temperature increase of four or more degrees Celsius, which according to Dr. Chu is a significant possibility, would literally place us in an unfamiliar world. Here we face increasing risks of abrupt, large-scale shifts in the climate system like collapse of ocean circulation and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Heat waves like that experienced in 2003 in Europe, when 35,000 people died and agricultural losses reached US$15 billion, would become commonplace by the middle of the century.[18]

There will be serious risks requiring coastal protection in South East Asia, small islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and large coastal cities, such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Calcutta, Karachi, Buenos Aires, St. Petersburg, New York, Miami, and London.[19] These cities would most likely be protected with sea walls and levies, leaving them exposed to problems like were seen in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. What we should be imagining is a series of Katrina-scale events - occurring repeatedly, and spread across many of the world's greatest developed and developing cities.

According to Stern, without the construction of expensive flood defenses, major world cities would have to be abandoned.[20] As many as 300 million additional people will be flooded each year by 3 to 4°C of warming; that's comparable to the entire population of the United States, each year. Ultimately, permanent displacement means refugees: climate change could lead to 150-200 million environmental refugees by the middle of the century. Protecting ourselves against these events and recovering from their effects could cost 0.5-1% of world GDP by as early as 2050.[21]

Clearly, the disaster that we are facing is orders of magnitude different from anything we've experienced thus far, and adaptation should not be taken for granted. It would be hubris on a grand scale to think that a civilization experiencing these types of destructive forces would come out unscathed.

Climate change thus poses a different scale of problem. Past human success in bending nature to our will provides little guidance on how to adapt to changes on a scale never before seen in human history. In the face of potentially major changes to basic patterns of life on earth, efforts to avoid such changes, rather than adapt to them, are prudent.

Dr. Chu pointed out that many nations, while admittedly not his own, have already begun this process. Europe and Japan enjoy high standards of living and prosperous democracies, yet have emissions levels much lower than those of the United States. Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom all get 1.8-1.9 times as much economic output per ton of carbon emissions. France does much better, at 2.8 times as much. Sweden leads the developed world, at 3.4 times as much output per ton of emissions. These are all prosperous, stable democratic societies; there is no reason to believe that the United States couldn't at least improve up to their level.[22]

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.

Sources:

Barnett, Tim, Robert Malone, William Pennell, Detlet Stammer, Bert Semtner, and Warren

Washington "The Effects of Climate Change on Water Resources in the West: Introduction and Overview", Climate Change, 62, 1-11.

Boykoff, Maxwell T., and Jules M. Boykoff. "Balance as bias: global warming and the US prestige press." Global Environmental Change 14 (2004): 125-36.

Boykoff, Maxwell T. "Flogging a dead norm? Newspaper coverage of anthropogenic climate change in the United States and United Kingdom from 2003 to 2006." Area 39 (2007): 470-81.

Brainard, Curtis. "Public Opinion and Climate: Part I." Editorial. Columbia Journalism Review 26 Aug. 2008.

Brainard, Curtis. "Public Opinion and Climate: Part II." Editorial. Columbia Journalism Review 27 Aug. 2008.

 

Brazil, Eric. "Farmers protest loss of water; 10,000 protest water cutoffs; Klamath Basin farmers losing irrigation to save fish", The San Francisco Chronicle, 8 May 2001, pA3.

 

Competitive Enterprise Institute: Global Warming/"Energy" (:60)

http://cei.org/pdf/GWEnergy-annotatedscript.pdf

 

Easterling, W.E., P.K. Aggarwal, P. Batima, K.M. Brander, L. Erda, S.M. Howden, A. Kirilenko,

J. Morton, J.-F. Soussana, J. Schmidhuber and F.N. Tubiello, 2007: Food, fibre and forest products. Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden and C.E. Hanson, Eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 273-313. p286.

 

Eilperin, Juliet. "Carbon Is Building Up in Atmosphere Faster Than Predicted." Washington Post 26 Sept. 2008: A2.

 

Fischlin, A., G.F. Midgley, J.T. Price, R. Leemans, B. Gopal, C. Turley, M.D.A. Rounsevell, O.P. Dube, J. Tarazona, A.A. Velichko, 2007: Ecosystems, their properties, goods, and services. Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden and C.E. Hanson, Eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 211-272.

 

Friedman, Thomas. "Thomas Friedman on Letterman." Interview. Late Show with David Letterman. CBS. 8 Sept. 2008.

 

"Greendex: Survey of Sustainable Consumption." National Geographic.

 

Hansen, Jim. "The Threat to the Planet." The New York Review of Books 13 July 2006.

IPCC, 2007: Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, Pachauri, R.K and Reisinger, A. (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, 104 pp.

Jayson, Sharon. "Psychologists determine what it means to think green" USA Today

King, David. "At last, I'm hopeful about climate change." The Independent. 1 Jan. 2007. 20 Sept. 2008 .

Kundzewicz, Z.W., L.J. Mata, N.W. Arnell, P. Döll, P. Kabat, B. Jiménez, K.A. Miller, T. Oki, Z. Sen and I.A. Shiklomanov, 2007: Freshwater resources and their management. Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden and C.E. Hanson, Eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 173-210. p194.

Kyrsanova, V. and F. Wechsung, "Impact of climate change and higher CO₂ on hydrological processes and crop productivity in the state of Brandenburg, Germany" Climate Change: Implications for the Hydrological Cycle and for Water Management, M. Beniston, Ed. (Dordrech: Kluwer, 2002), pp271-300; and Krysanova, V., F. Hatterman, and A. Habeck "Expected changes in water resources availability and water quality with respect to climate change in the Elbe River basin (Germany)", Nord. Hydrol. 36, 321-333.

McKibbon, Bill, "Warning on Warming" New York Review of Books, Vol. 54, No. 4, 15 March 2007.

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, "A Deeper Partisan Divide Over Global Warming", 8 May 2008.

"RealClimate." Communicating Climate, Climate Science. 29 Aug. 2008. 20 Sept. 2008.

Schuur, Edward A. et al. "Vulnerability of Permafrost Carbon to Climate Change: Implications for the Global Carbon Cycle." BioScience 58 (2008): 701-14.

Stern, Nicholas. The Economics of Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007.

"Thawing Permafrost Likely To Boost Global Warming, New Assessment Concludes." Science Daily. 2 Sept. 2008. 20 Sept. 2008.

Yeatman, William. "Global warming solution hurts people more than warming." Editorial.

Detroit News 28 Jan. 2008. http://cei.org/gencon/019,06388.cfm

Walker, Gabrielle, and King, Daivd, The Hot Topic, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 2008.

---

[1] Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, "A Deeper Partisan Divide Over Global Warming", 8 May 2008.

[2] "Greendex: Survey of Sustainable Consumption." National Geographic. Available at http://event.nationalgeographic.com/greendex/. Referenced 6 October 2008.

[3] Stern, Nicholas. The Economics of Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pV.

[4] The term CO₂e refers to the total green house gas effect in the atmosphere of all gases such as CO₂, N₂O, CH₄ and halocarbons as the equivalent amount of CO₂ to produce the same warming effect. At the beginning of the industrial revolution, the world average was 275 ppm.

[5] Juliet Eilperin, "Carbon Is Building Up in Atmosphere Faster Than Predicted," Washington Post, 26 Sept, 2008.

[6] Biello, David. "Conservative Climate" Scientific American, March 2007. Available at http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=conservative-climate. Referenced 6 October 2008.

[7] Schuur, Edward A. et al. "Vulnerability of Permafrost Carbon to Climate Change: Implications for the Global Carbon Cycle." BioScience 58 (2008): 701-14.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Kyrsanova, V. and F. Wechsung, "Impact of climate change and higher CO₂ on hydrological processes and crop productivity in the state of Brandenburg, Germany" Climate Change: Implications for the Hydrological Cycle and for Water Management, M. Beniston, Ed. (Dordrech: Kluwer, 2002), pp271-300; and Krysanova, V., F. Hatterman, and A. Habeck "Expected changes in water resources availability and water quality with respect to climate change in the Elbe River basin (Germany)", Nord. Hydrol. 36, 321-333.

[10] Tim Barnett, Robert Malone, William Pennell, Detlet Stammer, Bert Semtner, and Warren Washington "The Effects of Climate Change on Water Resources in the West: Introduction and Overview", Climate Change, 62, 1-11.

[11] Katharine Hayhoe, et al "Emissions pathways, climate change, and impacts on California", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101(34), pp12422-12427.

[12] Stern, Nicholas. The Economics of Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. p141.

[13] Kundzewicz, Z.W., L.J. Mata, N.W. Arnell, P. Döll, P. Kabat, B. Jiménez, K.A. Miller, T. Oki, Z. Sen and I.A. Shiklomanov, 2007: Freshwater resources and their management. Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden and C.E. Hanson, Eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 173-210. p194.

[14] Easterling, W.E., P.K. Aggarwal, P. Batima, K.M. Brander, L. Erda, S.M. Howden, A. Kirilenko, J. Morton, J.-F. Soussana, J. Schmidhuber and F.N. Tubiello, 2007: Food, fibre and forest products. Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani,

J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden and C.E. Hanson, Eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 273-313. p286.

[15] Wolfram Schenkler and Michael Roberts, "Estimating the Impact of Climate Change on Crop Yields: The Importance of Nonlinear Temperature Effects", Working Paper 13799 (Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, February 2008), at http://www.nber.org/papers/w13799.

[16] Fischlin, A., G.F. Midgley, J.T. Price, R. Leemans, B. Gopal, C. Turley, M.D.A. Rounsevell, O.P. Dube, J. Tarazona, A.A. Velichko, 2007: Ecosystems, their properties, goods, and services. Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden and C.E. Hanson, Eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 211-272. p. 235.

[17] Ibid, p243

[18] Stern, Nicholas. The Economics of Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Viii.

[19] Ibid, p56.

[20] Ibid. p81.

[21] Stern, Nicholas. The Economics of Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 138.

[22] Calculations based on the 2004 GDP data from the International Monetary Fund, and the 2004 emissions data gathered by CDIAC for the United Nations.