Glasgow summit’s test: Pay now or pay later for climate crisis
If scientists declared tomorrow that an asteroid was on a collision course with Earth, odds are a third of the population would reject the evidence, while half would balk at making sacrifices to save the planet.
Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia would probably tut-tut about increasing NASA’s budget, and instead insist on building consensus and demand a coal-powered strategy. On the left, progressives would require environmental impact statements and equity assessments before any proposed interventions.
Cranky old-timers, meanwhile, would email me thousands of words about how the astrophysicists got their calculations wrong. While a special few would argue the collision would bring a welcome cull of humanity and thus create a paradise not seen since Adam ate the apple for those who survived.
If you doubt me, consider how our fellow Americans are handling the global pandemic that is still killing 1,500 of our neighbors every day. Or watch what happens in Glasgow, Scotland, as world leaders avoid admitting their climate change strategy is failing to achieve even modest goals.
We’ve been ignoring reality for years. The first report warning that fossil fuel emissions would warm the atmosphere was delivered to President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965.
“Man is unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment,” the top climate scientists warned. “Within a few generations, he is burning the fossil fuels that slowly accumulated in the earth over the past 500 million years. … The climatic changes that may be produced by the increased CO2 content could be deleterious from the point of view of human beings.”
The experiment’s results are in: freak weather events, more powerful storms, the hottest years on record, fiercer fires, mega-droughts. And yet,
too many people refuse to respond.
While replanting his landscaping killed by the February Freeze, my neighbor said, “There won’t be another storm like that for 40 years. And I’ll be dead by then, so I won’t care.” When I asked why he was so confident in his forecast, he responded with a shrug.
Accepting that the world has transformed, or that we can do something about the future, is too much for too many. Humans don’t like making hard decisions or sacrifices. They don’t want to adjust the trajectory of their lives. In comparison, fatalism asks little from us. Accepting the consequences is easier than changing our behaviors.
In democracies, we elect people to make tough calls for us. Yet, voters are more likely to punish politicians for fighting climate change than letting it worsen. And to be frank, most world leaders, like my neighbor, will not be around when the worst, irreversible impacts occur after 2030.
Nevertheless, hundreds of presidents and prime ministers are gathering in Glasgow to tackle the climate crisis. While I reject calling this a “last chance,” politicians are running out of road to kick their cans down, explained Alok Sharma, the president of the
COP26 conference.
“What we’re trying to achieve at Glasgow is in many ways harder than Paris,” he said, referring to the 2016 agreement. “We are, if I can put it like this, getting towards the end of the exam, particularly on the issue of the rulebook after six years. We still have some of the most difficult questions to answer, and we’re effectively in the last half hour of the exam.”
Politicians, though, rarely act absent a crisis. The alligator close to the boat always overshadows the need to drain the swamp.
Critics like to complain about China, the world’s second-largest economy and first-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. President Xi Jinping has promised to reach carbon neutrality by 2060, but he’s also committed to eclipsing the United States in the 21st century. The latter is more important to his political future than the former.
Less wealthy countries, meanwhile, want to raise their populations out of poverty. They need inexpensive energy, and if the world wants them to avoid cheap fossil fuels, wealthy countries will have to cover a tab most have refused to pay.
At this point, I should explain how climate change threatens national security, low-lying cities, arid-land populations and the food supply. I should also tout the economic opportunities from overhauling the energy sector and building more energyefficient systems. I could end with the benefits of a cleaner and healthier environment.
None of those arguments, though, seem to work. What does resonate, for business owners at least, is the consequences of unchecked climate change. Weather will destroy millions of homes and destroy trillions in assets.
Pay now or pay later, the cliché says. If Glasgow ends as I fear, we can expect things to get worse before they get worser.