Liberal global warming denial

We're all pretty familiar with the conservative and neoconservative arguments against taking action to counter global warming, and even with their arguments denying the concept's validity. Until recently, however, I had been unaware of a liberal argument having the same effect. But I recently got into a discussion with a colleague at work who believes quite strongly that the threat of global warming is greatly over-rated and that action against such risks as it presents can be deferred indefinitely while more pressing problems demand our attention now -- problems such as famine, drought, and poverty in the Third World. In the course of our discussion, he sent along a link to "Spiked," a blog on the topic, which shall be the point of departure for this discussion, and which you might want to read.

It seems to me that this argument rests upon six major fallacies.

The first is the assumption that global warming has little or no current impact on the lives of the world's poor, and thus should be ignored while we address more pressing problems. There is bitter irony here, for the adverse effects of global warming will fall most heavily upon those least able to bear the burden, which are the same populations whose fates concern these liberal deniers of global warming's seriousness. Already, for example, we're seeing devastating droughts in many parts of the world -- linked by prominent climatologists to the effects of global warming -- which are making water for irrigation, human consumption and hygiene extremely difficult to obtain and are thereby imperiling the ability of some of the world's poorest people to survive. These droughts are contributing to desertification, further endangering the people in the affected regions. Some climatologists are also suggesting that global warming's effects are already making major storms more frequent and more severe, and their effects are being felt most heavily by very poor populations living in low-lying coastal areas. Working to ameliorate the suffering of the Third World without addressing a major root cause of that suffering seems altogether futile.

A second mistaken assumption is that the long-term effects of global warming will either be relatively minor or even benign, or will be amenable to correction by technological solutions not yet existent, or are so far distant that we need not worry about the problem now. Yet scientific study after scientific study tells us that the rate of change is increasing, that world climate systems will take a long time to respond to corrective action, and that we may already be at or near the tipping point of irreversible change. Further, the amount of change will, in fact, be major. For instance, even a five meter rise in sea levels -- which could well happen within this century -- will inundate vast amounts of land, and make even larger areas vulnerable to severe storms. Many of the world's poorest people live and farm in such areas; think of Bangladesh, for instance. (Many of the world's richest cities would also be affected; imagine the impact upon such American metropoli as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Miami, New Orleans, Seattle and Honolulu.) As Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona notes, "Even with a small sea level rise, we're going to destroy whole nations and their cultures that have existed for thousands of years." The adverse effects aren't limited to humanity, either; a study published in Nature warms that nearly a million species could be driven towards extinction by mid-century.

A third argument posits the false dichotomy that we must choose between addressing long-term problems such as global warming and more immediate problems such as poverty, hunger and disease. Why cannot we do both?

Obviously implicit in this third argument is the assumption that we lack the resources to do both. Yet the estimates I've seen suggest that the direct cost is analogous to or even lower than cost of our disastrous war in Iraq. Surely we could afford to do a lot to ameliorate all sorts of human suffering while also addressing global warming, were we to stop pouring our national treasure into the Iraqi sand. Further, the costs of not doing anything are also high, and probably much higher than the costs of taking action.

A fourth fallacy is the inherent assumption that there will be no offsetting savings as we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. But there will be, at both the individual and national levels. For example, a family which chooses a 2007 Honda Civic over a 2007 Honda Pilot 4WD, for instance, will travel 70% farther on the same amount of fuel and will pay about half as much for the vehicle itself (the price reflecting, among other things, a lower resource cost to the planet), yet for nearly all purposes the Civic would provide perfectly adequate transportation. Improving energy efficiency standards for all sorts of consumer products will similarly provide long-term savings to consumers while lowering national carbon emissions. Learning to use our energy more wisely -- bundling errands, walking or biking for short trips, setting thermostats a few degrees cooler in the winter and warmer in the summer, installing energy-efficient lighting, increasing our use of recycling -- will produce further savings for the consumer. Yet many of these steps can be taken without economic pain or even inconvenience. And they can all be done with current technology.

The troubling foundation to these arguments against taking action to combat global warming is the failure to recognize the depth of the scientific consensus over the seriousness of the danger of global warming. Fifteen years ago, the consensus did not yet exist, but now it does. With very few exceptions, the relevant scientific community recognizes the problem, and recognizes it as serious. There is still -- and probably will always be -- debate over the extent of the danger, and the rapidity with which warming-related problems will emerge, but such debate should not distract us from the underlying consensus that global warming is a clear and present danger to us all.

One issue which I tried to raise with my colleague which has so far received little attention, but which I think should alarm us all, is its potential for sparking conflict. The historical record is clear; there has always been a strong linkage between resource scarcities -- real, potential or merely perceived -- and conflict. To the extent that global warming imperils the ability of nations to obtain the resources they need, be it arable land, water, food, or anything else, it will lead to conflict, and to war.

It seems to me that addressing the causes of global warming is not only imperative, but is also essential to ameliorating the suffering of the poorest among us. To focus solely upon the latter without working to solve the former will prove analogous to arranging a more equitable distribution of deck chairs on the Titanic.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 9 July 2007