Understanding Climate: What can we do about it? A Special Thanksgiving Issue

Paul Bryan and David Dodds, Contributors

I have a special treat to share on this Thanksgiving: two highly-respected subject matter experts and industry colleagues offering some of their big picture thoughts on renewable energy and renewable chemicals and where we are today.

– Joel Stone, President and Executive Director, CSS

Why aren't we making more progress in combating climate change?

Thoughts from Paul Bryan. -Joel Stone

I think it's fair to say that most of humanity under most circumstances will act principally in their self-interest and with the greatest focus on the short term. Historically, I guess animals who don't do this get killed in the short term and produce no descendants, so as an instinct, it is unsurprising. But as THINKING animals, we should be able to devote more attention to the longer term and to the species as a whole.

We need to ask ourselves; how can we connect these instinctual motivations to the greater good and the longer term. Generally, this means invoking one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth. LOVE, either romantic or sentimental, is a more positive motivator, but hard to extend beyond family and close friends. FEAR is a very powerful motivator. If we use my favorite analogy for what we are missing, it is the "Pearl Harbor Moment," recalling a time when there was probably a much greater love of country in the USA than there is today, and when a sudden and very impactful event instilled profound fear. People in large numbers were immediately motivated to volunteer for military service, to accept rationing and other privations, and to do so on a daily basis over a period of years.

I don't know if we can replicate that.

One problem is that people will only fear something to the extent that they BELIEVE it to be a threat. German propaganda and Americans who profited financially or politically by spreading it helped to keep Americans from knowing the truth about the Nazi regime, and until Pearl Harbor, this played a big role in keeping us on the sidelines. Rachel Maddow's "Ultra" podcast is well worth a listen on this shameful chapter in American history (https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-presents-ultra). Today, we have a large and powerful apparatus in the U.S. and elsewhere that aims to prevent people from believing in the reality of what faces us. I don't know what we--in the sense of this group or in the larger sense of the scientifically informed in toto--can do to affect this.

There are two problems with waiting for a Pearl Harbor Moment. One is that the Axis Powers were ultimately a group of human beings, and at that not even a meaningful plurality of the Earth's population nor in control of a meaningful portion of our total resources. Though they were powerful and had a significant head start on the Allies, obviously it took relatively little time to defeat them once enough people with enough resources were galvanized to oppose them. But now, the "enemy" is the Earth's climate. Its rate of change has a momentum that we have been "fueling"; for more than a century, and there are potentially significant positive feedback loops that are pushing it even harder. Even if we suddenly persuade 8 billion human beings of the urgency of the required response, we CAN'T make a meaningful impact within as short a time frame as December 7, 1941, to August 15, 1945.

The second problem is that there may never be a Pearl Harbor Moment. There may be tipping points that are "dramatic" in the context of geological time scales, but to the human consciousness, it may be more like the analogy of "boiling a frog". Periodic catastrophes will be local and impacts on a global scale will be modest for any single event. For most people, climate impacts will be minor, diffuse, and stretched out over time. Financial impacts from significant efforts to mitigate climate, on the other hand, will be immediate and potentially severe. People will accept and adapt rather than sacrificing to support prompt and significant action, and no doubt there will continue to be organized encouragement for them to do so. Our resources are limited. The more we spend on adapting to climate change, the less remains to be spent on mitigation. This creates a vicious cycle, and it will tend to concentrate impacts on the poor in the "Global South."

I wish I had an answer to all this.

My good friend and fellow Wolf David Dodds was thoughtful enough to respond--Joel Stone

I have two suggestions – and I realize these are just words on an email and not concrete actions. One is to call out the bad guys.? I don’t mean to write explanations about science, etc.? I mean doing what the “other side” does and say “That’s a lie”. ?“That’s wrong.” “That will kill you”, and all the other mechanics of sowing fear, doubt and confusion.? I was sitting in one of the plenary sessions at the AFCC conference this week, and one of the panelists made some very reasonable comments about the need to educate the consumer (about renewable products).? All true, but my gut reaction was, I have been hearing about the need to educate the consumer/public for most of my life as a scientist.? Screw it!? Just tell people “Those guys are wrong” and “you will die”.? Pretty much like the 2008 bailout was explained by Paulson; “If you don’t let us do this, the world will end”.

My original thought for the second suggestion was to get the environmental liability of climate change monetized and on the books.? But on thinking further, that is probably not really good enough (although it would be useful for setting carbon taxes, etc.) ?But people will go to really ridiculous lengths to avoid “high dread risks, even very, very, VERY small ones, especially if linked to life and health.? So, could we calculate a number like “for every 1 ppm rise in atmospheric CO2 . . .your life is shortened by 6 days”, or “ . . . malaria comes 5 miles closer to your county,” or “ . . . your insurance will cost 4% more” ?(we are already going down this path with increases in insurance premiums), or “ . . . our deficit increases by 150 billion dollars (due to payments for crop shortages and climate damage).”? There would need to be several statements of this type for different audiences, but something that would be frightening at an immediate level to a relatively large number of people.? Yes, “if everything is dangerous, nothing is dangerous,” and the Prop 65 signs on every gas pump in California has no effect on people filling their cars with gasoline.? But, saying “there is acrylamide in your coffee” did get a response (the wrong one, but it got a response – so it is an example, not a model!).

Paul responds to David's thoughts:

On the first suggestion, I agree in principle, but the bad guys still have the short-term cost/benefit tradeoff in their favor. If you can do something painful to stave off a distant, vague pain or not do anything and hope for the best, lots of people will do the latter.

On the second point, insurance is a good example of an industry that simply cannot ignore climate change. I have friends near where I live who cannot get home insurance at any price due to wildfire risks in their community. And these are not off-grid hippies in the deep woods -- they are all within reasonable commute distance of San Francisco. David's point about Prop. 65 is also well made. It seems like every door to every commercial enterprise in the State has warnings that some potentially harmful chemical lurks within. When the warning sign on the front door on the Hazardous Waste Dump is the same as the one on McDonald's, CVS, and the Post Office (!!!), it ceases to be a warning. We have to scare people, because unless they are scared, they will not act.

But repetition of warnings they didn't heed the first ten times isn't going to get it done.

- Paul Bryan -