I can hear the bones humming

m e d i a :

w a n d e r i n g s :

how is climate change going to affect my life?

the basics: how global warming works
(Just In Case You Forgot)

The sun radiates sunlight down through the atmosphere to earth.

Some of the sun's energy warms us up.
The rest is bounced back into space as infrared radiation.

Greenhouse gases (mostly carbon dioxide, also methane, water vapour, ozone, and nitrous oxide) in the atmosphere don't release this energy into space. Instead, they trap this infrared radiation and bounce it back to earth again, making things even warmer.

Without the natural greenhouse effect, Earth would be a ball of ice.
However, humans create more greenhouse gases than are naturally in the atmosphere (by burning fossil fuels, air pollution, etc.). More gases = more warmth.

where are we in this global-warming process?

According to James Hansen, director of Goddard Space Science at NASA, “We are on the precipce of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption.”¹.

We are definitely at the point where you'd be hard-pressed to find a credible scientist that denies that global warming is happening, or that it's caused by human activities. And we're at the point where we're running out of time to stop it. “We have at most a decade to sharply reverse course,” asserts Joseph Romm (science writer and former asst. secretary, US Dept of Energy)².

You've probably been hearing about global warming for decades. But now is a definitely the time to take another look at it.

When scientists assess climate change, they measure and discuss how to stabilize three things:
* temperature rise
* emissions
* CO2 concentrations

The global temperature has risen .8 degrees Celsius (1.4 F) over the last century.
In recent years, there's been a sharp spike-- the first 5 years of the 21st century, plus 1998, have been the hottest on record. It's important to note that the rise isn't the same all over the globe-- certain locations, like the Arctic, experience a steeper rise.

Emissions are what we're putting in the atmosphere-- 26 billion metric tons per year of carbon dioxide, or more than 4 metric tons per person per year (assuming all people were equal in their use of carbon-- clearly they're not, which is something we'll discuss).

Carbon dioxide is the major gas we're concerned about-- it's responsible for most of the warming. Its concentration in the atmosphere is measured in parts-per-million. Before the industrial era, it measured 270-280 ppm; in 1960, 315 ppm; today, it measures 380 ppm. In the past few years, it's been climbing over 2 ppm per year (a 2.08 in 2003, 2.54 in 2004)³.

At what point does climate change cause what scientists term a “dangerous anthropogenic interference” (DAI) -- basically, at what point have we fucked up the climate enough to cause what we'd consider a catastrophe? Is it 500 ppm, 450 ppm, 400 ppm?

It's the EU goal to limit the rise of temperatures to 2 C, but we're already 40% of the way there.
If we get more than 2C, Greenland probably melts, causing a sea level rise of 20 feet⁴.

Even if we somehow stopped increasing emissions right now, we would still see another .6C rise because of the time-lag factor - the emissions don't affect temperatures immediately⁵.

where does the CO2 come from?

well, it comes mostly from oil and coal being burnt, in these areas:

* Industry - 40%
* Buildings - 31% (heating, cooling, etc)
* Transport - 22%
* Agriculture - 4 % ⁶

Or, you could think of it this way: every gallon of gas burned in your car = 5 pounds of carbon in the atmosphere. Every kilowatt hour of electricity from coal = half a pound of carbon.⁷

People cite China (and India) as voracious consumers of fuel, but they won't catch up to the U.S.'s cumulative emissions for decades yet. The United States is responsible for 30% of the cumulative CO2 emissions to date; we are currently responsible for 20% of the annual emissions (with 5 % of the world population)⁸

so, what happens when things get warmer?

Among the things we can look forward to are:

* an increase of temperatures (no, really?) of up to a possible 10F rise in the continental US⁹

* increased droughts (higher temperatures suck more water from dry earth; also, the jet stream may be moving toward the poles, which will expand the tropics and subtropical deserts)

* higher precipitation intensity (not gentle rain, but torrents)

* increased hurricane activity

* frequent heat waves, like the 2003 heat wave which killed 50,000 people across Europe; (expect heat waves in the U.S. also -- these will be especially deadly in the cities, due to the heat-island effect -- i.e. the city is warmer than the country)

* more wildfires

* the spread of malaria and other diseases as their carriers shift their habitats

* Melting. This includes:

- glaciers and snowpacks. Besides putting an end to skiing in some places, this is bad, because many arid areas depend on glaciers and snowpacks for water.
- permafrost. The causing not only damage to buildings and trees in the tundra, but a potentialy devastating feedback loop as stored methane is released (see feedback loops)

- Ice sheets.

- The Arctic could be free of summertime ice by midcentury. “This is no minor development: as far as anyone can tell, the Arctic hasn't been free of major ice cover at any point in the last 800,000 years.”¹⁰
- Greenland. It's got an ice sheet the size of France and Spain combined, and most of it is 2 km high-- and it's been 3 million years since it was ice-free, but “a 2C rise would ensure the ice sheet's eventual demise.”

“For Greenland's ice, the point of no return wouldn't be obvious at first. Once under way, though, melting will become virutally unstoppable through a set of positive feedbacks. For example, as meltwater runs off from the highest elevations, the sheet's newly lowered summit would encounter warmer air temperatures. This would allow for still more melting, and so on, putting the ice in a cascade towards oblivion.
Scientists have said that it could take centuries for the ice sheet to melt; on the other hand, the glaciers they are tracking on Greenland are losing ice far faster than the models of 5 years ago predicted. In short, “Greenland's vast coating of ice could end up shaping where millions of people live a few generations from now.”¹¹.

- Antarctica. It's got 90% of the world's ice; 8 times as much as Greenland.¹² We once scoffed at the idea that Antarctica could melt, but now we're rethinking that. In 2001, the Intergovenmental Panel on Glimate Change though Antarctic would gain mass this century, but a few years later the data showed otherwise; a 2006 University of Colorado-Boulder study showed that Antarctica was losing 150 cubic kilometers of ice each year.

* a possible cooling in northern Europe, or at least a mediation of some of global warming's effects, due to a slowing of the Atlantic thermohaline current.
Basically, the U.K. and parts of Europe are much warmer than other cities at their latitude, thanks to the North Altantic Drift current and the Gulf Stream. These ocean currents flow from the Gulf of Mexico and bring warm water (and hence warm weather) to Europe. However, with more freshwater in the north Atlantic, due to increased rain and snowmelt across the Arctic, this current that normally wams north Europe could be weakened or interrupted. “The best estimate is that the flow might weaken by 10-50 % over the next century or so. That's probably not enough to offset global warming completely, although it could certainly put a dent in it.”¹³

* Last but not least, mass extinction. “Climate change between now and 2050 may commit as many as 37% of all species to eventual extinction.”¹⁴
Can you really wrap your head around a statistic like that?

getting down to the real science:
do scientists really know what they're talking about?

So, if all the aforementioned things will happen, why aren't we doing something about it?

Aside from collective denial and unwillingness to change, the science is downright obfuscated in places. Instead of focusing on why the science is obfuscated, or who's putting the spin on it, I'd rather focus on why it is obfuscate-able.

Climate change just doesn't come gradually; it's a big, complex system. And, as Joseph Romm points out, “the first remarkable, and ominous, fact about our climate system is that it is not steady, not self-stabilizing”.¹⁵ Look at any graph of climate change, and you won't see gracefull rises or falls-- they're all crazy sawtooth patterns. The nature of “the beast”, as it's often called, is that it's hard to model.

The following is a quote from a newpaper article published this week -- 29 Dec 2006 -- on a city-sized piece of an Arctic ice shelf that has broken off. The scientist studying the ice said:

What surprised us was how quickly it happened ... It's pretty alarming. Even 10 years ago scientists assumed that when global warming changes occur that it would happen gradually so that perhaps we expected these ice shelves just to melt away quite slowly, but the big surprise is that, for one they are going, but secondly, that when they do go, they just go suddenly, it's all at once, in a span of an hour.

Let's look at some of the other unknowns in the scenarios-- the variables that make predicting climate change so tricky.

* Positive Feedback Loops (a.k.a. vicious cycles)

Climate change has some evil little ironies hidden in it-- feedback loops, or “self-reinforcing processes that tend to amplify change”.¹⁶ For example, when it's warmer, more water evaporates, leading to more water vapor in the air. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas-- having more water vapor in the air adds to the warming cycle and doubling the impact of a CO2 increase.¹⁷ Here are some other “positive feedback loops” (‘positive' only in the scientific sense that they magnify the effect of warming, rather than ‘negative' feedback loops which lessen it).

- Melting sea ice reduces the amount of sunlight that gets reflected back to space (instead of white surfaces, which reflect 90% of solar energy, we have dark oceans, which only reflect 10% of solar energy)... thus leading to even more warming;

- when the permafrost melts, it could release huge amounts of methane, thus leading to even more warming. Basically, the permafrost acts like a giant freezer for methane hydrates (molucles of water bonded with methane) -- there's all this frozen peat down there -- and if it is released, it could cause colossal global warming much worse than we've got now. It's not just methane, but carbon also-- right now, there are 3,600 billion metric tons of CO2 locked in the permafrost, which exceeds all the CO2 currently in the atmosphere.¹⁸ The most apocalyptic scenario has this melting permafrost releasing huge amounts methane and carbon, leading to 1,100 ppm of CO2 in 2100 (with an inland US temperature 20F higher and an inevitable 80-foot sea rise).¹⁹

* Carbon Sinks

When we spew carbon into the air, 50% of it hangs out in the atmosphere. Another 25% is absorbed by the ocean, and another 25% is taken in by land-based ecosystems (trees, crops, soils).²⁰
The places which absorb carbon -- oceans, forests, soils -- are known as carbon sinks. What happens when they don't absorb more carbon-- when the sinks get jammed, or “saturate”?

How does a carbon sink stop absorbing carbon? Well, in the oceans (let's leave aside for now the coral bleaching and the pH changes), the warming leads to decreased mixing of cold and warm water, which reduces CO2 absorption. As far as the forests, they can't absorb carbon if they're cut down. The rainforests that aren't intentionally burned are made more susceptible to wildfire by logging. And with soils, “warming can cause soils to stop taking up CO2 and, ultimately, to start releasing it”²¹-- another feedback loop for you.
When you start looking at climate change, you have to look at not just the things that emit carbon, but the things that absorb it, which gets you into forestry and oceanology and so on and so on... just to make an already complex system harder to predict.

* Global Dimming

Some of global warming's affects may actually be lessened by all our pollution. Climatologist James Lovelock explains:

“Curiously, smoke and dust pollution of the northern hemispehre reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This ‘global dimming' is transient and could disappear in a few days if there were an economic downturn or a reduction of fossil fuel burning. This would leave us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke.”²²

The result of all these variables tends to be that climate change could be a lot worse than current models show. Since a lot of the models and studies don't take into account all these feedback loops and stuff, it probably won't turn out better than the models or studies indicate.

The science does suggest, however, that there's a threshold beyond which it is more difficult to fight the feebacks. We don't know if this threshold is 450 ppm, 600 ppm, or whatever. “By 2025, we'll know much better where it is,” Romm asserts.²³ He also comments:

“Barring a major reversal in U.S. policies in the very next decade, come the 2020s, most everyone will know the grim fate that awaits the next fifty generations. But the only plausible way to avoid it will be a desperate effor to cut gloabl emissions by 75% in less than three decades-- a massive sustained great intervention into every aspect of our lives on a scale that far surpasses what this country did during World War II.”²⁴

are we totally screwed?

The answer to this question kind of depends on your assessment of both human nature and the current political climate; but instead of going there, I'd like to discuss the strategy that two Princeton scientists, Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, have come up with for actually tackling the global warming problem. Their study was published in the journal <i>Science</i> in 2004, and it continues to receive a lot of attention.

The goal is to stabilize carbon emissions by midcentury (which would result in concentrations of 500 ppm, or a temperature rise of 2C).

The strategy is to employ” stabilization wedges”. Each wedge represents one step we can take that would prevent a billion metric tons of carbon per year from being emitted by 2054. We need to employ seven of these wedges to stabilize emissions.

To understand it, take a look at this diagram.

The suggested wedges include these types of endeavors (some are not Socolow's orignal 2004 wedges, but ones that Romm has modified in 2007, see his book for details):

* Doubling the fuel economy of all cars and cutting the distance driven per can in half.

* Installing energy-efficient lights and appliances (replicating California's successful program in doing so)

* A 50-fold expansion of wind energy (2 million more megawatt turbines, covering an area about the size of Germany -- which would only be an increase of 8% / year, compared to the current increase of wind-power generation of 30% / year)

* A 700-fold expansion of photovoltaic energy

* A 50-fold expansion of ethanol (which, as Robert Henson points out, would use up 15% of land on earth that's now used for agriculture, an area the size of India)

* A halting of all deforestation and doubling the rate of reforestation

* Employing conservation tillage (this reduces the CO2 that escapes from tilled soil)

* Building 700 new nuclear plants (doubling the current capacity)

* A fourfold increase in natural gas use

* Being more intelligent about how we use coal. (And we will use coal more and more, since oil is running out-- for the past year, China has been building a new dirty-coal plant every week, and the U.S. has new dirty-coal plants in progress too). Instead of these dirty plants, we can build coal gasification plants that employ Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). Rather than burning coal directly, they heat it and burn the resulting gases; the products can be refined to synfuels (synthetic petroleum or diesel). This isn't new; in fact, Hitler used this process when Germany's oil supplies dropped during WWII.²⁵ Then, we sequester the carbon and inject it deep into the Earth -- deeper than 800 m (2600 feet), where it takes on a liquid-like form that can be stored indefinitely (this hasn't yet been greatly tested). It can theoretically be stored in saline dquifers, or depleted oil and gas wells; however, we must build coal plants that are designed to capture the carbon to begin with.

Obviously, the longer we wait to build these new ones, the more old-fashioned dirty ones will exist. As of 2006, no plant employing CCS exists.

All of these wedges are possible, but none are currently being done. As Socolow states, “There is no easy wedge”²⁴. However, Kolbert notes that “all of Socolow's calculations are based on the notion-- clearly hypothetical-- that steps to stabilize emissions will be taken immediately, or at east iwthin the next few years. This assumption is key not only becasue we are constantly pumping more CO2 into the atmospehre but also because we are constantly building infrastructure than, in effect, guarantees that that much more additional C)2 will be released in the future”.²⁷

Similarly, Romm writes: “Obviously, and tragically, the chances are slim that we will start pursuing these eight changes in 2010. Right now, we don't have the political consensus in this country to begin pursuing even one of them.” (24).

He posits a scenario: Suppose we elect a real administration in 2008 that manages to start on these in 2010, though, and after 2061, somehow manage to decrease carbon emissions. We could stabilize CO2 concentrations at 550 ppm -- still increasing temperatures another 1.5 by 2100 and beyond, melting Greenland and causing a 20-foot sea level rise, but avoiding a catastrophic 40-80-foot sea level rise.²⁸

Suppose, though, that we take some wishy-washy actions now and wait until 2025 to put these efforts into practice.

“Had we started these eight wedges in 2010, global CO2 emissions would have remained forzen at 8 billion metric tons. But because we delayed, they will merely slow emissions growth” -- to 600 ppm in 2100, up to 750 ppm, and get started with the vicious cycles, we would see 2.5C rise in temperatures by 2100. “The outcome: We caused an eventual 20-foot sea level rise, and we probably caused an eventual 80-foot rise. We don't prevent a century or more of super-hurricanes and mega-droughts. We were insufficiently desperate and poorly led. We waited for new technology to show up in 2025 instead of deploying existing technology and once ... And if we do wait until 2025 ... our actions will have to be are more desperate and aggressive.”²⁹

As Romm concludes, “The tragedy, then, as historians of the future will most certainly recount, is that we ruined their world not because we lacked the knoweldge or technology to save it but simply because we chose not to make the effort.”³⁰

However, 2007 should be the year we start to do something about this. We have, already, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; they will release a report in Paris in February that will make waves all over the globe. Society and government are capable of changing when they want to-- the U.S. government is the same government that outlawed slavery, abolished child labor, and put industry to work building tanks and bombs during WW2.

So far, the governmental solution (at least in the United States) has been to ignore the problem. When the governments are awakened, how will they respond?

forget the government. doesn't the answer to climate change begin at home?

(a Back-and-Forth Exploration of Ideas)

“It seems likely that soon the US will take global heating seriously and move from its recent scepticism. When they do, I believe that their response will be to try to stop it by a ‘technological fix'.”- James Lovelock³¹

Ah, technology. We can hope for a miracle breakthrough (as Romm points out, we still haven't had any major energy technological breakthroughs in the past 30 years; we still use coal for electricity). I think any large-scale technological-fix is not only improbable; it would be beside the point. What we need to do is change our lifestyle and way of being in the world, not desperately try to cling to it while creating some high-tech dystopia. Take the example of ethanol and biofuels, as activist Alexis Ziegler does in his article, “Biodiesel: Salvation or Disaster?” He discusses the absurdity of feeding food to cars and the cost of this to the global poor:

Why are we trying to solve our ecological poblems with all the wrong answers? Because the right answeres challenge our lifestyle. It is absolutely impossible to suppor the American lifestyle in a sustainable fashion with any energy ssource ... Supply-side biofuels perpetuate the myth that our lifestyle can continue, if only we find the right fuel-- biodiesel, ethanol, hydrogen, etc.³²

He concludes, “Real answers are social and ecological, not technological. Turning the beast of industrialsm with its voracious appetite away from fossil fuel and into our forests and fields is not an answer.”

But regardless of my humble little opinion on technology, or his, or yours, the governments will probably try this stuff. The question is, do you want an evil government or a less evil one attempting to pull this off? As Lovelock points out, “We may need restrictions, rationing and the call to service that were familiar in wartime and in addition suffer for awhile a loss of freedom.”³³

I've never been a big fan of the U.S. government, and I'm certainly not expecting it to save us. At the same time, I realize it may be the only thing that can prevent large-scale suffering, and unlike many other nations, we do have mechanisms that (sometimes, theoretically) let us choose our leaders. Really, it seems like we have few options here:

* lose all hope in elected government and let the corporations and the capitalist market to save us,

* elect a somewhat benign 2008 government that will face climate change by enacting some of the wedges proposed; forming programs that consist of a combination of corporate regulation and forced conservation, a la the WW2 effort or the measures during the Depression era,

* elect another rather evil 2008 government and let them use climate change as an excuse to curtail more freedoms and extend their power across the globe.

Again: doesn't the answer to global warming begin in your backyard?

No. This can only be fixed by a huge-scale policy effort. I'm all for grassroots activism, but we can't build nuclear power plants in our backyard. Don't get me wrong: I don't think more nuclear plants or injecting carbon into the earth are long-term solutions. What I want to see us do is transition to a completely different worldview with a minimum of suffering. I think this transition will work a lot more smoothly with electricity.

-- Fuck it, that's a lie. I think the project of civilization is doomed. Maybe we should just give up now and not even bother with building windmills and trying to save it. I think we should just open up another bottle of vodka. -- No, but if we give up, the clowns in power are just going to concoct a worse dystopia for us. So we should start voting and stuff, right? -- Or maybe we should just head for the hills and form communes. Fuck.

Community initatives are essential, but they depend on 1) a significant number of people around the world taking up some kind of community action and deciding to change their lifestyles, which I can tell you from firsthand experience isn't going to happen (in the U.S.) in the timeframe we need it to, and 2) communities actually being able to work together to revise the way they live, which though it's happening all over the globe, is a difficult and time-consuming process. You have to do the community thing, but you also have to get political. You can choose to not participate, to say that both political parties are the same... but left alone, to their own devices, these guys are going to screw up the planet for everybody for generations to come. Making a difference locally is noble, but much more is needed. ...for example...

2 people on a round-trip between Europe and the US = 4 tons of CO2 = the emissions of a typical US car per year³⁴

Damn, me riding my bicycle around in the rain isn't going to offset the hundreds of guys with pickup trucks in Midland Texas or the millions of Chinese who want to drive cars like the Americans do. I think we're fucked. I guess we'll just have to adapt.

“We'll just adapt.”

Tell that to the people in Tuvalu or Bangladesh or the Arctic, whose homelands and way of life will be wiped out forever.
I have no doubt humanity will adapt, though-- it's our best and worst trait. Americans did so well adapting to their current high-tech way of life that already, just a century later, they can't conceive of living without it. We are so well-adapted to cars and video games and electricity and air conditioning that it's made us blind to the global effects of these things; certainly we can adapt to something else when these things are no longer possible for us to use the way we use them, but it's glib to ignore the millions who will have to truly suffer during the process.

I think we've had a gluttenous excess of food-for-thought tonight. I will leave you with two things: the eloquent conclusion to Elizabeth's Kolbert's book (because she writes a better conclusion than I ever could), and a question.

Her conclusion: “As the effects of global warming become more and more difficult to ignore, will we react by finally fashioning a global response? Or will we retreat into even narrower and more destructive forms of self-interest? It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologiocally advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.”

The question: In twenty years, how are we going to explain this to our children?

post script / on emotions

“Hot chocolate with whipped cream!” “Mocha latte!” The baristas at Barnes & Noble are busy today; their shouts have been the tuned-out backdrop for the last four hours, where I have sat numbly at this table reviewing all the recently-published books on global warming.

Do I want a hot chocolate with whipped cream? No. It will not make this better. I am incredulous that I had to spend twenty minutes wandering around this maze of a bookstore before I found the corner where the “Nature” books were tucked away. I can't believe these just-published books weren't displayed at the entrance to the store. What is everyone reading about? How could they be reading about anything else? It seems insane that this potentially horrific century is creeping up on us while the small segment of the population who reads is reading about, I don't know, interior design or sex or murder. Either I am wrong, and these scientists who I'm reading are wrong, and we're not about to walk off a cliff here. Or, everyone else is blind.

Except that nobody's really blind. Everyone I know knows about global warming. So is it that they just don't care? No, everyone I know cares, and everyone I know is a caring person. So... is it just that we don't know what to do? That must be it. We don't know what to do. We expect Them to take care of us, but They don't know what to do, either. I've quoted extensively above from a lot of brilliant people who are really working on the problem, but in reading their books, I wondered (and you might too) if they really expect anything to be done. Frankly, I don't think any of them does, in their heart-of-hearts; they simply have to believe in the possibility of a solution and do everything they can to advocate that possibility-- which includes being positive.

Lots has been written about global warming and the weather-related implications of it, or the social implications of it; hardly anything is written about the emotional implications of it. This is understandably because most of the writing about it is done by scientists-- and they shouldn't be writing about the emotional implications of it, since they have enough of a hard time being listened to without going into that un-objective mess. Rather, it's my job, if I have one, to speak about these other effects of global warming...

Fear. Despair; hoplessness. Guilt. Anger. Which applies to you? How do you feel when you read about the way our lifestyle is destroying the planet? It's totally worth talking about these emotions, because it's not just technology or politics that keep us from doing something about the problem-- it's emotions. We are clearly not rational creatures; otherwise we wouldn't have gotten ourselves into this mess in the first place. No rational being destroys its own habitat. No, we are irrational, emotional-- so let's examine this for a moment-- what we've done, the trauma, our reactions to it...

Fear and anxiety, I don't have so much of, since I went through a lot of my fear when I was a girl. There's more of a slow dread, a this-will-really-suck wincing kind of feeling, but it's balanced by a kind of steadfast love and knowledge that things will work out in the very long run. Still, I'm prone to bouts of despair, like my afternoon the other day in Barnes & Noble-- knowing that what I do is pretty ineffectual-- stepping out of the bleary big box, car keys in hand, to face the snarl of traffic in suburban Tucson, a city that shouldn't even exist in the midst of this desert -- despair; seeing clearly the senseless tragedy of it all.

Guilt, I wear for sure, since my carbon footprint is dozens if not hundreds of times yours-- I went up in an airplane over 100 times in 2006-- it's literally my actions that are causing this mess. These words don't suffice to ameliorate them. Still, the blame for all this isn't solely on our generation (our generation just bears the blame for potentially missing the last chance to do something about it). After all, this 21st-century-climate-change business could be seen as the logical result of where Western civilization has been heading... look at the genocide of the Native Americans, the voracious appetite for their land and resources... back through European colonization of the world... Spanish thirst for the mines of South America... the deforestation of Greece and the Middle East... probably all the way to Babylon itself. Our generation just happens to be around to see the end of the destructive processes caused by a take-all mindset. Lucky us. (This is an explanation for our behavior, not an excuse.)

Anger, I'm not prone to. Regret, probably, finally... unless I think of some brilliant action to take soon.

Writer Christian Parenti did a review of five books on global warming in the Canadian magazine The Walrus; his article was entitled “The Bad Future: Climate Change vs. Civilization” (Nov. 2006). He writes about moving through the rubble of post-Katrina New Orleans:

“I had entered not so much a physical place as a new era: the bad future, the long-preidcted beginning of the end, the time ruled by cataclysmic climate change.” He describes the battered, flooded, looted, and rotting houses; the incompetent and graft-ridden governmental reconstruction efforts; and comments, “In all these respects, post-hurricane New Orleans could be an accurate harbinger of what global warming and climate change could mean: social breakdown, poverty, corruption, and disease.”

The bad future. This resonated with me because it's what haunts me when I walk around America; it's why I try not to remain too long in this country. I have visions of the bad future in Florida, in Arizona, in Texas, in most every place I walk the streets of. Cities built in places where cities shouldn't exist; patterns gone grossly wrong. (Obviously, living outside America doesn't to anything to stop the bad future from happening, but it lets me live as a functional human being rather than somebody who thinks about the apocalypse all day and night.) On one hand, I'm glad most people don't see this bad future-- they should be able to work hard and relax at the bar, or play in the park with their children-- yes. On the other hand, if more people saw the bad future, perhaps we could act more coherently to divert course. Researching climate change made me realize the bad future is not merely one possibility, but the default possibility. That is not good.

I hope we can stop the bad future from unfolding. What might the good future look like? I'm about to complete a novel that addresses this question; I'll do what I can to get it published. I'm such a modern-American-magician sometimes: I believe that if we can envision something, we can create it. Imagination is always the hard part. I'm prepared to work really hard within this system to create a new way of life, but I'm also prepared to abandon modern civilization and its deadly luxuries, too; whatever comes. I'm not prepared to live in some high-tech dystopia or on a nature-demolished planet; others could adapt to that, not I. Whatever comes, we'll need lots of good music and a sense of humor and an appreciate for the beauty of tragedy. Are you ready?

post-post script / (what about that introduction?)

I understand more of the science behind climate change, but...
....I thought you were going to help me figure out where to survive the apocalypse or help me pick up girls or something. Plus, you don't offer any solutions.
Well, if you made it this far you've got half a brain, which means you've figured not to live in coastal areas. Europe would be a decent bet, if you can stay out of the hot cities and find a place to live there... maybe South America, the southern part, near water... Canada would be good... the Pacific Northwest; New England, sure. As far as picking up girls, just be upbeat about the whole climate change. But not too bouncy and not too ironic. Kind of approach it with a sensitive sense of humor. Sensitive but not too dripping with Buddhist-compassionate-energy. You know. There's a balance there. And as far as solutions... nobody knows how we're going to implement the things suggested, least of all me. I just want to get everyone thinking about it, cause I figure the more people are thinking about it, the more likely we are to come up with something.

Resources

As always, I encourage you to question everything I write (I'm not a scientist, after all) and take up your own research. Here are some recently published books I recommend, along with one website. While I question the wisdom of ‘expert culture,' this is one area where I urge you to check the credentials of the people writing. I also advise you to focus on published books and peer-reviewed journals: this is one topic where the Internet is more noise than signal. Any girl with half a mind and a computer (like me) can broadcast their opinion; not every girl has academic standards like mine, and there's an overflow of misinformation out there.

Henson, Robert. The Rough Guide to Climate Change. Ed. Duncan Clark. London: Rough Guides, 2006.
Published by the same people who do the travel books, this is an easy-to-understand gide to the problem. It's written by a researcher from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Kolbert, Elizabeth. Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. New York: Bloomsbury, 2006.
This book is often reviewed with Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers, also published in 2006. The author, whose book grew from a piece she did for The New Yorker, traveled around the world to places affected with climate change; her travelogue is filled with on-site discussions with scientists.

Lovelock, James. The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis and the Future of Humanity. New York: Basic Books, 2006.
The only somewhat controversial figure on my list is British scientist James Lovelock, who is known for his Gaia hypothesis. Basically, his concept is that the Earth is a living organism-- environmentalists love it; scientists don't want to touch it. I don't think the fact that he believes the Earth functions as a living organism negates any of his other sound science, so I have no hesitation in including his well-written book on global heating.

Romm, Joseph. Hell and High Water: Global Warming -- The Solution and the Politics -- And What We Should Do. New York: William Morrow, 2007.
This brand-new book is written by a former assistant secretary of the DOE who is now involved in consulting companies about energy strategies; he has also written a book about hydrogen. While I don't love his emphasis on technology, I found this book brilliant for its realism and urgency.

Al Gore's documentary and book, An Inconvenient Truth, are well worth watching. Even if you don't love Gore, he does a really good job of helping your average American grasp the concepts at play here.

Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning, is another 2006 book written by British author and frequent Guardian columnist George Monbiot. Haven't read the book yet, but saw Monbiot speak once in England: compelling; read an excerpt from his book at www.turnuptheheat.org.

Finally, http://www.realclimate.org is a collective blog from real climate scientists. Science-heavy, but what else do you expect?

footnotes

1) Romm, 1. 2) Romm, 3. 3) Henson, 24. 4) Henson, 16. 5) Romm, 21. 6) Henson, 35. 7) Kolbert, 135. 8) Henson, 38. 9) Romm, 1. 10) Henson, 73. 11) Henson, 83.12) Romm, 83. 13) Henson, 14. 14) Henson, 13, citing a 2004 study by Chris Thomas, University of Leeds, published in Nature 15) Romm, 15. 16) Henson, 74. 17) Henson, 22. 18) Romm, 67. 19) Romm, 94. 20) Henson, 33. 21) Romm, 67. 22) Lovelock, xiv. 23) Romm, 73. 24) Romm, 74. 25) Henson, 291. 26) Kolbert, 138. 27) Kolbert, 142. 28) Romm, 24. 29) Romm, 24. 30) Romm, 25. 31) Lovelock, 128. 32) Ziegler, Alexis. EarthFirst Journal, Vol. 25 Issue 4. 33) Lovelock, 153. 34) Henson, 324.