It’s beginning to look as if Hurricane Sandy has finally made the words “climate change” acceptable for public discussion. As most rational people noticed, the words never appeared anywhere in the four national debates. Global warming is more accurate, but at least the word climate is out there in the mass media and in the mouths of a few politicians. The far-seeing congressman Ed Markey is getting interviews and other hitherto timid or merely pragmatic Democrats will soon be saying the same truths in public. I fully expect Chuck Schumer, among others, to step up on this issue. His pessimism on getting even cap-and-tradethrough congress in 2010 proved to be correct.
It’s still very tentative with lots of perhapses and maybes about whether or not this one storm is directly caused by climate change, but the corporate media is beginning to gingerly poke at this issue. Andrew Revkin at the often admirable NY Times dot Earth blog is typical in still quibbling over whether Sandy was directly caused by climate change.(Two views of a superstorm in climate context)but I’m anticipating that the conversation will slowly shift toward the kind of realism expressed by James Hansen in his essay on the XL pipeline and the Alberta Tar Sands: Game over for climate change
Braver politicians like Andy Cuomoare already saying climate change is real and we have to expect a lot more Hurricane Sandys in years to come. President Obama, although he knows climate change is real, will not bring up the obvious causes of the superstorm just now probably because he thinks it may lose him key votes from the ignorant and uninformed slice of voters who are still undecided. (and he is probably right)
Okay, let’s be optimistic and say this tragedy will mark a new admission of reality in public discourse and within the Democratic party. The president and his allies will, I am hoping, feel that it is now politically safe to make climate change mitigation the priority it wasn’t in his first administration. The next step is to decide what to do about it. There’s already talk of huge gates to block storm surges into New York and Washington and vast seawalls along the East Coast. Given the poor economic health of the US, such gigantic ventures seem unlikely – and may well be no more than so many sandcastles before an advancing tide.
I believe that we can count on Obama in his second term to continue to push for better regulation of emissions, more funding for alternative power sources and better mileage for automobiles. But that simply won’t be enough. According to Bill McKibbin, we are currently at 392 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere and need to get back to 350 ppm just to hold climate change from getting worse and sustain the present world population. If we keep burning fossil fuels even at the reduced rates Obama projects, climate change will continue to accelerate and human population will begin to die off. There just won’t be enough food if droughts and ocean acidification continues at this year’s pace. And long dormant diseases like cholera and malaria will reappear in the industrialized world. If we don’t want to go the way of the dinosaurs, we will have to reduce fossil fuel consumption to a level that will make our present material standard of living impossible.
The big question of this age then is: how will we respond if we are asked to make the substantial sacrifices involved in drastically reducing our dependence on fossil fuels?
Neither party is currently willing to ask the people to pay more taxes and, in fact, they compete with each other in offering tax cut bribes to the voters. On this site we tend to like Democratic politicians but keep in mind that they offer us things we want: college aid, better health care, security in old age. They do not ask us to sacrifice for those poorer than ourselves and, in fact, rarely even use the word “poor” in their speeches. Count up how many times Obama and Biden use the phrase “middle class” vs. “poor.”
Both parties pursue endless war and evidently most people are okay with all the killing as long as their sons and daughters aren't drafted - or better yet, if drones do the killing. The fact that Obama has greatly increased the use of drones apparently goes over well enough with most Democratic voters. If he demanded a draft, we would shout him out of office. (Leave aside for a moment the rationale for such campaigns - the point is that they are fought without asking for any sacrifice from the entire populace.)
But successfully addressing global warming simply cannot be done without demanding material sacrifices from every one of us - and not simply from one class or another. If Americans are to move away from both fossil and nuclear power, we have to be willing to accept far higher prices for gasoline, home heating oil, natural gas and electricity – and everything produced by fossil fuel. The only way to rapidly reduce such consumption and to make alternative sources competitive is to tax fossil fuels to the point where gasoline is $10 or $20 a gallon. Forget about air conditioning in summer and get ready to be very cold in winter. And cancel that vacation trip to Cancun. Airfare will be out of reach for most of us. In fact, you probably should learn to live with the clothes you now own. If you want a change in fashion, you'll probably have to trade with your friends.
How do you think we will deal with sacrifices like these? The majority of Americans, stirred up by opportunists and demagogues, can be counted on to blame someone else for such deprivations: Muslims, liberals, Jews, rich people, poor people whoever. Maybe for a short spell, as in World War II, we can be convinced to sacrifice but when we are asked to totally give up so much of what we think of as happiness, we simply won't tolerate any politician who makes such demands of them.
Even many of my friends who count themselves on the Left will find such a lifestyle intolerable and will insist that the ultra-wealthy can and should make all the sacrifices. But even taxing the wealthy at 95% would not mean that average people can afford the wasteful level of fossil fuel consumption that sustains our present driving, residential and dietary habits.
Can we reverse course and avoid complete catastrophe? Yes. Can we reverse course under the presently organized political system? I hope so, but only if we can break the mental stranglehold of our material possessions. Happiness does not depend on having a car or your own house with a picket fence. A trip to Paris does not make you happier than a walk in a nearby park with someone you love. Hey, you don’t even need a laptop to be happy, believe it or not.
When we can redefine happiness as something other than all the material goods brought to us by fossil fuels, then we will be able to slow the ongoing climate catastrophe. Maybe we can get through the coldest winter night by wearing lots of sweaters and curling up with someone we love. Maybe we can educate ourselves just as well with books and conversations with our peers as we could at a $60,000 a year private college. Maybe we can live for months without sushi, sirloin or a nice glass of imported wine. Maybe we don’t need to live til 90 and enjoy all the best Medicare can offer. Maybe happiness does not require the kind of life made possible by fossil fuels.
And isn’t that what the wisest people have been telling us for centuries? Not one of them said that our possessions, the size of our houses, our access to meat or our ability to travel widely are the sources of human happiness.