By John M. Miller
A Series of Lectures for People Who Prefer Pondering to Pandering
In the Lowcountry of South Carolina, live oaks typically lose replace their leaves in a two-week period in late February or early March - - - except that this year it began happening in early January. Pine trees deposit their patina of bilious green dust on our cars in March - - - except that this year they are doing it in mid-January. Azaleas are popping everywhere, but they unpredictable in the best of circumstances. Roses that should have gone dormant continue to lift their faces to the warm sun.
On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, British writer Caitlin Moran told what it was like in October in England. “At the bottom of my garden is a wrongness, a brightness – a patch of milky-green yellow that shouldn’t be there. The primroses are out; confused. They should be underground until March. Under the apple tree, the narcissi and daffodils are coming up – expecting April; finding October. The tree itself has pink blossoms next to red fruit; as joltingly wrong as a pregnant child, or a plane falling to earth. The earth is still fidgety and mild, when it should, by now, be silent, under frost. It still feels loud out there….We’ve jumped straight from summer to spring. All that greenness is…shouting.”
Last April, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that temperatures in the lower 48 states were 8.6 degrees above normal for March, and 6 degrees higher than average for the first three months of the year. The first quarter of 2012 broke the January-March record by 1.4 degrees. Usually records are broken by just one- or two-tenths of a degree. US records date back to 1895.
The world had its hottest September ever last year. It was the third time since 2000 that a new record was tied or set for September. The average temperature was 1.2 degrees above normal, which is a huge increase.
When the figures were tabulated for all of 2012, it set a new US record. The average temperature for the entire country was 55.3 degrees, 3.2 degrees above the average for the 20th century. Every state had warmer temperatures than average, and 19 states had record annual warmth. Seven of the top warmest years in US history have occurred since 1998. In 2012, there were 34,008 new daily high temperature records set at various weather stations around the country.
Last year was not the warmest on record for the world, however; 2012 was just the tenth hottest year for our planet. But all of the ten highest world average temperatures were set since 1998. And the data go all the way back to 1880.
People used to say that what we are experiencing is global warming. In general that is true, but by no means is it true everywhere. Eastern Europe, China, and India have had considerably colder winters the last two years. It is drier in many places than usual, but wetter in other places. On the other hand, Australia is now having its hottest summer ever right now. They are baking at the Australian Open tennis tournament. Thus far Australia’s average high is 105 degrees, which means averaging all the highs for every day all over Australia. Their land mass is about the same as the lower 48 states of the USA. The highest high this summer in Australia was set in Leonora, a town in Western Australia, where it was 120 degrees on the hottest day. Forest and grass fires have become a massive problem.
It is impossible to deny these statistics, but it is certainly possible to debate whether they indicate a trend. There is widespread disagreement on whether, in fact, the current worldwide warming trend will continue. Many people claim climate ups and downs have occurred relatively often throughout history and prehistory, which is undeniable. The world has gotten cooler and warmer many times before. And we do not have enough data yet to convince everyone that actual climate change is underway.
Are you an optimist or a pessimist about what seems to be happening? In a recent Non Sequitur cartoon, a middle-aged couple approach the maitre’d in a restaurant. Above him are two signs: “Optimist Section” and “Pessimist Section.” The husband says to his wife, “It means either we sit separately or we do not talk about the economy.” Well, the same thing holds for climate change. So we ask, why are the optimists (who deny climate change) still optimistic, and why have the pessimists (who affirm climate change) become so pessimistic?
Climate change (if you accept its reality) is the most noticeable in the Arctic. In 2007, at the end of the winter, there were 15 million square kilometers of ice in the Arctic Ocean. That represents 90% the size of Russia. By mid-September of that year, just 4.17 million kilometers was left. That equates to the European Union minus Greece (which might be minus Greece anyway, but that’s for another lecture). The 4.17 million kilometers of ice was the lowest on record. In 2012, however, another new low record was set: 3.41 million km. Now ships are going from the Atlantic to the Pacific across the Arctic Ocean during summer rather than through the Panama Canal. Only in the last few years has the thawing of the sea ice made that possible.
Why does the ice melt so much faster than before? Greenhouse gasses are warming the air, which causes the ice to melt quicker. The air also becomes more moist. Moist air traps more heat in summer. It also creates more clouds, which keeps the surface temperature warmer below the clouds. Hence, even more melting. The National Snow and Ice Data Center predicts that eventually most of the Arctic sea ice will come and go each year, with less than a million square km being there year round. That is a huge boon for shipping, but an alarming reality for climates elsewhere.
Some researchers say the open water in the Arctic in the summer leads to colder winters in Europe. They think it may block moderating winter weather which normally would cross Europe. Needless to say, conclusions about this are not unanimous.
A new study has shown that since 1992 the ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica are melting three times faster than previously. They are now melting 60% faster than in 2007. That is an astonishing figure.
Here is an important question for everyone to consider. What do we choose to believe about this? The numbers are still somewhat inconclusive, but what choice do we exercise regarding them? Do we want to believe that there is a discernible trend, or do we not want to believe it? And, either way, why do we choose to believe what we believe?
A Non Sequitur cartoon in the Island Packet showed a group of men in sweaters and stocking caps standing in a small pond with water up to their hips. They are batting around a beach ball in the water with hockey sticks, and there is a net at the edge of the pond, with a goalie in it. The caption reads, “The Climate Change Deniers’ Pond Hockey Tournament.”
The New Yorker had a cartoon which addressed climate change from another perspective. It shows a man in a badly-torn suit with a white dress shirt and loosened tie in a cave with three little children. They sit around a small fire. The disheveled Wall Street stock broker says to the bewildered children, “Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.”
That explains why many people choose to be optimistic, thinking these meteorological numbers are simply a statistical blip. If they represent what is widely accepted as an undeniable trend, it means it will cost the world’s population trillions of dollars to slow and to repair the damage, if there is still time to repair it. Besides, it is bad for business to be forced to cut back on the use of oil and coal, which are the primary culprits in warming temperatures. That no one, except perhaps people in West Virginia or Saudi Arabia, would dispute.
For the past three decades, the average surface temperature of the Atlantic Ocean off New England was 48 degrees. In 2012, it exceeded 51 degrees. The fish have moved north and east to get into cooler water, so the fishermen have to go farther out to find the fish. In Delaware Bay and Chesapeake Bay, the surface ocean temperature was 6 degrees higher last year than normal, and the bottom temperature was 5 degrees higher. These numbers represent enormous changes for the sea life in those locations. Can they survive it? If not, does that matter? Does it?
Why would anyone decide to reject the idea of climate change? As previously stated, it is perceived to be bad for business. If business is part of the problem, it is reasoned, then it must be part of the solution, and the probably is bad for business. Even through the economic downturn, after all, considerable value has been created for shareholders. They have done well.
The Heartland Institute in Washington, DC has been one of the most vociferous skeptics about climate change. But they have lost some major donors in recent months, including someone who had planned to give a large grant to provide primary schools with materials denouncing climate change. Even some of the skeptics are becoming skeptical of their skepticism.
The skeptics seem not to accept the validity of the statistics which have been assembled by the host of scientists whose research has led them to conclude that climate change is both real and alarming. Ask yourself this question: Why would scientists falsify their numbers? What would be the point? And if, at this juncture, it is still a matter of probabilities, is there not a far greater danger in disavowing the scientists’ findings than in quickly instituting some of the changes which their numbers seem to require? If this issue is still a gamble, is it better to gamble that climate change is or is not a reality facing the entire world and all of its people?
Would it be correct to say that most climate-change-deniers are political conservatives, and most who accept the idea are moderates to liberals? And if that is true, why is it true? Surely it is not simply because conservatives mainly watch Fox News and moderates or liberals mainly watch MSNBC, CNN, PBS, or network news, although all that is probably true. Fox negates climate change; everyone else at least is open to the possibility, if not the probability.
But it is more than a simple matter of who is exposed to what media. Conservatives tend to be pro-business, and as I have said, climate change would seem to make demands that business, particularly the energy business, must make some quick and drastic changes. We must wean ourselves off fossil fuels far faster than we are currently doing. We must speed up our attempts to create renewable energy, or at least cleaner energy, even if it costs enormous amounts of capital or government investment. And we must do that if climate change is judged to be a growing reality by decision makers all around the world.
But there is also an enormous cost to us if we don’t do something - - - if climate change indeed is a growing fact. In the spring and summer of 2012, there was a major increase of destructive storms through the South and Midwest. But they were as nothing compared to Hurricane Sandy hitting the Northeast at the end of October in 2012. No one can prove Sandy was the result of climate change, but no one can refute that there has never been a hurricane of that size to hit the Northeast ever, and especially that late in the hurricane season. It is said to have done at least $80 billion in damage, and probably much more. Apparently it caused almost as much damage as Katrina in New Orleans. Are we being penny wise and pound foolish not to have invested much more much sooner in renewable energy?
Professor William Happer is a physics professor at Princeton University. He appeared before the Senate Energy Committee in February of 2009. In his testimony he said, “I believe the increase of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind. I predict that future historians will look back on this period much as we now view the period just before the passage of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” That, you will recall, was the one which outlawed intoxicating liquors. Prof. Happer correctly recalled how that turned out with the repeal of prohibition through the 21st Amendment. And there is no doubt that a certain amount of carbon dioxide is necessary for a balance of nature between plants and animals. Vegetation breathes in carbon dioxide and produces oxygen, which is very good for all animals, including humans, because we cannot survive without oxygen. But it is the rapid increase of CO2 which is the concern, because it is stated by a great majority of climatologists that it is raising temperatures in the oceans and atmosphere in most locations around the world.
If the American people or our government or the peoples and the governments of the world all agreed tomorrow to start taking important measures to reverse climate change, thereby assuming that it needed to be reversed, could it be a mistake? It could.
Is such a decision likely to be a mistake? That is the question facing us, along with the peoples and governments of the entire developed world. Climate change is not something that undeveloped or underdeveloped nations can do much about, although they are likely to be far more damaged by it than the developed states of the world. China has surpassed the US as the biggest producer of carbon dioxide. Before too long, India will knock us into third place. But Congo and Mali and Afghanistan are not adding much to the world’s woes in carbon dioxide output, nor shall they anytime soon. However, so much of the world is now well developed that all the Have countries are probably creating potentially lethal problems for themselves as well as for the Have-Nots.
Remember the Kyoto Treaty? It was signed by dozens of countries in 1997, including 37 industrialized nations and the European Union. Four UN members refused to sign. They were Afghanistan, Andorra, Sudan - - - and the United States of America. By the treaty the signatories promised over time to reduce by a certain percentage their emissions of four gases that it is believed lead to climate change. Recently the Kyoto treaty appears to have encountered major bumps in the road by most of the signatories. The US didn’t sign Kyoto in the first place because we said it did not require enough of India and China. So other nations have concluded, why should they try to meet their goals? In the meantime, there is 20% more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than in the year 2000. Instead of making progress, the world is falling back. In fact, at the rate the world is going, there were 58 more gigatons of CO2 in the atmosphere by 2012 than there was in 2000. A gigaton is a billion tons. That increase is more than the carbon dioxide currently produced by the US, Europe, and Russia combined.
NASA climatologist James Hansen says we cannot go above 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere without sending climate change into a lethal downward spiral. But we are already at 392 ppm, and the numbers are rising quickly. Therefore it may safely be deduced we are not all dead yet. But are we in the process of impending mass destruction?
There is no doubt that droughts are increasing in most places throughout the world. But it is difficult to prove this pattern has never happened before in human history. There is no doubt that insured losses from severe thunderstorms were $26 billion in 2011, the highest amount of losses on record, and more than twice the amount of the previous highest annual loss, which happened to be the previous year. But as yet no one can validate this pattern is likely to continue indefinitely. There is also no doubt there were 63 natural catastrophes in 1980 in the USA, each of which resulted in at least a million dollars of damage, there were 88 such disasters in 1990, 134 disasters in 2000, and 250 in 2010. The numbers are provided by a major German insurer, Munich Re. And there is no doubt that Hurricane Sandy is the biggest and most powerful storm to have created havoc in such a wide swath of coastland when it came ashore. Nothing like its extraordinary width has ever before been recorded.
Can we afford not to take drastic action now? A heat wave in Europe in 2003 killed 50,000 people. In 2010 in Russia heat and forest fires caused billions of rubles in damage. An insurance company estimates that weather-related calamities during the past three decades have cost $34 billion per year. In the New York Review of Books, writer Bill McKibben said, “Global warming happened just slowly enough that political systems have been able to ignore it. The distress signal is emitted at a frequency that scientists can hear quite clearly, but it is seemingly just beyond the reach of most politicians.” How true --- and how tragic --- that is!
Do you know what is the greatest enemy of action on this, THE most pressing problem ever to have faced the world at any point in its history? The answer can be found in one word: democracy. Or, from another perspective, government. Not nearly enough voters are sufficiently concerned to demand immediate action from their governments, and no governments are going to do what their constituents do not loudly and persistently demand of them. They often don’t do what we demand anyway. We are too focused on our individual lives to perceive the danger to everyone living everywhere. The costs of solving this matter are so immense that few politicians seem to have enough courage to insist on doing what must be done to prevent sending our planet into a downward spiral of total destruction.
We cannot solve this problem on the cheap, and we cannot do it piecemeal. All or nearly all developed nations must join together to save themselves and everyone else. If the EU participates fully, for example, but the US and China and India and others refuse, there shall be no solution, and the Earth will burn itself into slow-motion oblivion. Kyoto can’t do it; only a very powerful global agreement can do it. People in general will never agree; only governments can accomplish the enormous investments required to prevent climate catastrophe. And no government currently, including that of the USA, is showing the necessary gumption or inspiration to get the job done. All governments are engaged, as always, in “business as usual.” But climate change is not a business-as-usual issue. It is the greatest question ever to encounter the human race, even greater than nuclear warfare, which thus far the governments of nuclear-weapon nations have somehow managed to avert. Climate change, however, requires a totally different kind of thinking and far broader and more enthusiastically-endorsed agreements.
Climate change deniers will be delighted to hear that the ocean around Antarctica is gaining ice as fast as the Arctic Ocean is losing ice. But that may be because the hole in the atmosphere at the South Pole out of which increasing amounts of ozone is escaping into the stratosphere causes this buildup of ice. It is theorized that huge thunderstorms, which come from climate change, are causing the loss of ozone into the stratosphere. That loss causes climate change to increase even faster.
Melting sea ice will not affect the level of the oceans, because it displaces its own mass in seawater. However, melting glaciers over land do cause the ocean level to rise, and all over the Arctic region, and in Antarctica, glaciers are losing their ice at an astonishing rate. The Arctic region is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world. The Greenland ice sheet is losing ice four times as fast as a decade ago. In Alaska, some glaciers lose dozens or hundreds of feet each day, and some have disappeared altogether. There are thousands of glaciers in the 49th State, and all but a dozen or so are losing ice, while the puny dozen are gaining ice. Soon Glacier National Park in Montana will become Former Glacier National Park.
Most schools do not put climate change into their curriculum. It is too controversial, administrators conclude, so they avoid it altogether. When it is taught, “both sides” are usually included. Are there two sides to this --- truly? Honestly?
Energy derived from fossil fuels (oil and coal) is the No. 1 culprit in climate change. Progress has been made in diminishing the amounts of CO2 the energy companies emit, but they are doing relatively little to develop alternative renewable sources of energy (solar, wind, hydroelectric power, etc.). The tar sands of northwestern Canada are said to represent 200 billion barrels of recoverable oil. But it takes much more energy to transform that into usable fuel than other forms of crude oil, so it adds to the problem. James Hansen of NASA says if all that oil is extracted, it will mean the end of the Earth as a viable planet for any form of life.
Regardless of what happens with Canada’s tar sands, American fracking is turning us quickly into a net oil exporter. The International Energy Agency says that by 2015 the US will surpass Russia as the largest natural gas producer, and that by 2017 we will pass Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer. This is a classic good news/bad news situation. The bad news is that the potentially calamitous side-effects of fracking are either still not well enough understood or they are being ignored. There seems to be no doubt that in some areas of the Northeast fracking has adversely affected water quality, and that chemicals have gotten into the aquifers.
Up to now, it has taken much more energy to heat our homes than to cool them. But worldwide, according to the experts, the energy used for heat will remain relatively constant. But with temperatures in most places increasing significantly, by 2100 (if we make it to 2100), the use of energy for cooling will increase over 25 times what we are using now. The prospect of that is exceedingly alarming, because with current energy production, it will insert huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
Coal puts the most carbon into the air of all the fossil fuels. The use of coal is going up in all industrialized areas of the world, but especially in China and India, whose demand for new energy far outstrips that of the US and the EU. Natural gas produces the least amount of carbon of the fossil fuels, and with its rapid increase in production in the US via fracking, more and more gas is used for generating electricity. That is all the good, relatively speaking, but it still produces carbon, even if to a lesser extent. Further, because of the cost of coal compared to gas in Europe, the Europeans are using more coal than gas, and thus more CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere. The world simply demands too much electricity for its own good.
The oil industry spends $440,000 per day to lobby Congress to keep using oil. That’s why serious climatologists are prevented from giving testimony in Congressional hearings on these issues. The purchased Congressmen prevent them from testifying. It’s also why climate change opponents can come up with many Congressional figures they use to refute the changes in the Earth’s average temperatures; too few accurate figures get into the public record of Congress, though they do appear in the objective press.
Nuclear energy does not pollute the air, but it has other problems, as we all know, the primary one being: What do we do with nuclear waste? There are details about this we cannot take time to investigate. However, if we cannot come up with much better methods of renewable forms of energy, we may have to resort to much more nuclear power production for the time being, if only to cut down drastically on fossil fuel production. Nuclear is a classic damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don’t scenario, but it may be less threatening for the present time than fossil fuels. At least it doesn’t heat the atmosphere, although over centuries it may heat geological formations in which the spent fuel is buried. Furthermore, because natural gas pollutes far less than either coal or oil, power plants should be moving to use natural gas almost exclusively to generate electricity.
Renewable energy production (wind, solar, and hydro) is obviously the best way to go over the long haul, but currently it is very expensive, and it is not producing a very large percentage of our electricity. We could avoid using billions of barrels of oil if we used solar power to heat much of our water in this country, but it would cost billions of dollars to install the necessary technology. The technology is certainly immediately available. In Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East and southern Europe, most water in homes is heated by the sun. In China, 25% of water is heated by solar panels. The US can heat most of our water by solar power, but so far we have avoided doing it. As the Immortal Bard said more than four centuries ago in another context, “What fools these mortals be!”
Prior to the election last November, a poll reported that 92% of likely voters, including 84% of Republicans, supported solar power. The best way to promote this is by stimulus money from the government. But when that happens, Solyndras may also happen. But the risks must be taken, or else we shall continue on our lethal addiction to fossil fuels.
In the Mojave Desert of California, something called the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating system is being installed. More than 170,000 mirrors are facing the sun, and when the project is finished, it will power 140,000 California homes. This one project will double the amount of solar thermal energy produced in the US. A result is that there will be 400,000 fewer tons of carbon released into the air. It isn’t much, but it’s a start. And it can be duplicated a thousand or ten thousand times over.
A major tax credit for wind-generated power is about to expire. It needs to be extended. Government, by means of taxation, must be heavily involved in seeking solutions to climate change. And for anyone in Congress to refute the reality of climate change is political irresponsibility. Sadly, to date it is certainly not political suicide. In fact, in certain states and certain congressional districts, it is political suicide not to deny climate change.
In 1920 the British economist Arthur Pigou wrote a book called The Economics of Welfare. In it he suggested that some forms of individual human behavior are so adverse to the good of society that they should be taxed. Thus taxes on alcohol or tobacco are called Pigouvian taxes. For the good of the entire planet, you and I need to be taxed for some of our equally deleterious habits, such as driving gasoline-powered cars or using too much electricity. Astonishingly, Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil have expressed support for a carbon tax. Instead of paying $3.25 a gallon for gas, we should pay $6 or $7, and the added tax should be used by the government to fund research into better ways of producing renewable or even nuclear energy, in addition to subsidizing the manufacturers of all automobiles and trucks to operate on natural gas. Instead of having a monthly electric bill of $200-250 for a three bedroom house, we should be taxed an extra $100 or $200, and that tax money also should be utilized for finding ways out of our carbon-fix energy production methods.
There would be at least two major advantages to such Pigouvian taxes. First, we would either drive far fewer miles in private cars or get far more fuel-efficient cars. Secondly, the taxes would be used to extricate ourselves from our own carbon folly. Similar benefits have certainly resulted from tobacco, and to a lesser extent from alcohol. But carbon is a far greater threat to the human race than the various forms of cancer caused by tobacco or the multiple billions of dollars which alcoholism costs our society in health problems or lost human productivity. We MUST start paying for our carbon mistakes before our carbon mistakes completely destroy us. We will have to assist the poor in these efforts by means of tax rebates of some sort, but the rest of us must begin to be taxed for our foolhardy habits. WE are the problem, you and I.
Already we have a large sales tax on gas-guzzling automobiles. You may not be aware of it, but if so, it’s probably because you don’t drive a car that gets eight miles to the gallon. If cars get a very low mileage, they cost $1000-$7500 more to purchase because of this unusual “sin” tax. Car manufacturers all over the world are feverishly working to raise mileage on their high-performance models to avoid the tax. Good! Force the capitalistic system to rectify the excesses of capitalism, and all kinds of good things happen. It has always been the American way to solve problems. And this is an American way.
Inevitably, policies which governments and corporations shall pass to deal with the whole issue of climate change may fall into the category of trial and error. That is, with the best of intentions, things may go awry. But we no longer have the option of doing nothing. The truth is, we can’t give up fossil fuels too quickly without causing widespread economic havoc. But we can’t do it too slowly either, without the possibility of killing the cosmic patient before she is completely weaned off her fossil fuels.
There are two more catastrophes in this collage of climatic catastrophes I have not yet mentioned. You may not be aware of them. I wasn’t either, until I started boning up on this dreary topic. When you and I drive our cars, the carbon dioxide produced weighs three or four times as much as the fuel it comes from. You may ask, as I did, why that is, and I don’t know why it is. But I trust the scientists who say it is true. Stated another way, let’s say it takes two tanks of gas to go on a round trip of eight hundred miles or so from here to Raleigh. Hugh Hunt is a scientist at Cambridge University in England. He says the carbon dioxide produced from such a journey is 300 kilograms, which is the equivalent of ten suitcases full of very heavy CO2. Where is that carbon dioxide going to go on our trip to North Carolina? Into the atmosphere, that’s where. Unless we keep it from evaporating, which can’t be done, it has nowhere else to go. How many miles a year do you drive? Each of us is contributing to the demise of our planet by many tons of carbon, year after year.
But that isn’t all. Many climatologists claim their greatest fear is for global warming completely to thaw the millions of square miles of permafrost which stretch across Alaska, Canada, and Siberia. They say there is twice as much CO2, primarily in the form of methane, locked into the frozen tundra of the far north as all the carbon currently circulating in the atmosphere. Should all that methane escape into the Earth’s atmosphere, which inevitably would happen if all the permafrost thawed, it would be Game Over. Methane has 30 times as much carbon as mere carbon dioxide. In other words, nature will surely kill us later if we don’t kill ourselves sooner by our excessive use of fossil fuels.
Lest any of you go into a spectacular swoon of climatic consternation, let me now draw this jolting jeremiad to a hopeful conclusion. You may remember the black-and-white movie from decades ago called On the Beach. It was set in Australia after a nuclear war. Everyone on the island continent had died except for a contingent of people who got into a submarine and left for parts unknown. Members of the Salvation Army had hung a banner over the road leading into the submarine base which read, “There Is Still Time, Brother.”
And so there is. No one can know for certain how much time we have, but we do have enough time left radically to change our course. For it to succeed, however, it must be radical, and not merely incremental.
Please listen carefully. Even if climate change is not definitely occurring, as a nation and as citizens of the world we must take major measures to wean ourselves off fossil fuels anyway, if for no other reason than that we are rapidly running out of them. In a century or less, they will all be used up. Therefore we are obligated for our own survival to find alternatives. Renewable sources of energy – solar, hydroelectric, wind, geothermal – are an absolute requirement for the continuation of human and all other forms of life on our planet. So everyone, climate-change negaters and climate-change affirmers, can all get on that bandwagon. Not to do so is obviously foolishness in the extreme. We shall soon run out of fossil fuels. Of that there is no doubt.
However, an observation needs to be made about those who deny that climate change is occurring, and with increasing speed. I want to state this in the boldest of terms. In essence, to deny climate change may be cynical, short-sighted, and ultimately self-centered. Denial declares that I and my standard of living take precedence over the world and its survival. Such a denial is inevitably disastrous over the long term. Overcoming climate change must and will cost all of us incalculably in income, savings, investments, and standards of living. People in undeveloped or undeveloped nations will be relatively unaffected by the necessary measures to overcome the cosmic trend, because they have so little of this world’s blessings anyway, and they are a very small part of the problem. It is people living in the developed nations who are the primary creators of this calamity, and we are the ones who must bear the greatest burden for fixing it.
Now for what the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard called in one of his books “a Concluding Unscientific Postscript.” I am not a scientist, nor do I claim to be one. The only science I took in high school or college which has any bearing on this lecture, which is negligible at the very best, was a class in biology in high school and a course in zoology and another in geology in college.
Nonetheless, I want to give you a faint glimmer of hope, about which I am absolutely convinced, even without any scientific support of any sort. Climate change will not destroy the earth by such-and-such a year. It just won’t evolve like that. But of the 7-billion-plus inhabitants of our planet now living, climate change will guarantee that eventually there will be less than a billion, or half a billion, or a few hundred million, or a few million. The entire planetary ecosystem shall not go defunct in an instantaneous reverse Big Bang, or more likely, Gigantic Death Rattle. Instead, countless species of animals and plants shall fairly quickly become extinct, because they cannot survive in the overheated ecosystem which is evolving.
When that happens, the human beings who are left will find ways of adapting to their new circumstances, assuming there is enough of a natural environment left into which they shall be able to adapt. They will be forced to become subsistence farmers wherever they find themselves. The process of getting to that point will certainly take many decades, and perhaps even a century or two. Then, these limited millions of survivors shall be faced with their one last gasp of hope for the human race and whatever species of plants and animals are also survivors.
Without strong - - - and maybe even heavy-handed - - - leaders around the world, the trends of climate change can only continue to hasten along their inexorable timeline. If the leaders do not take action against climate change, climate change shall take action against the leaders. The world’s population in general is now far too passive. But when most of us see an inevitable cosmic calamity looming up before us, we may finally demand that our leaders do something, if the leaders by then will have done too little, which currently is the very predictable pattern.
In my lifetime, I have given at least fifty sermons for every lecture I have ever delivered. If this were a sermon, I would end on a different note. But since it is a lecture, I shall end with those ever-memorable words of Nevil Shute, who wrote On the Beach in 1957 about another huge problem in a simpler and somehow more comprehensible age: “There Is Still Time, Brother.” Thank heavens, brothers and sisters, there IS still time.