A Convenient Time

Earlier this week my wife and I went to see An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary on global warming and its impacts, present and future. The film is produced by and features Al Gore, who humorously describes himself as “the man who used to be the next president of the United States”. It’s basically the filming of a slide presentation that Gore has given all around the world. Roger Ebert, the film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, gave it “four stars” and for the first time in his career told his readers, “You owe it to yourself to see this movie.” He went on to envision a day when our grandchildren would ask us if we saw this movie and if we hadn’t, they would ask why; and if we had, they would ask what we did about it.

The facts presented are compelling. They paint a clear picture of the status of global temperature and its impacts today in relation to what we’ve seen throughout recorded history. The conclusion is simple: global warming is a fact; it is a serious threat to all of us; and it’s not merely another in a long history of natural warming and cooling cycles. We’re left to conclude that we’ve blown through the statistical ceiling and there’s no end in sight, given current trends.

Al Gore’s involvement with the film makes it a political lightning rod. Two camps polarize quickly: the hardcore Democrats and liberals rally around their former flag-bearer and embrace the message without hesitation or condition, while the equally hardcore Republicans and conservatives dismiss both the message and the messenger as borderline fanatical. The rest of us wandering in the middle can rest relatively assured that the answer is with us – somewhere in the middle. That middle ground, however, still presents a compelling case for informed and timely action lest we go past the tipping point. I’m not sure if that’s a point of no return, as Gore would have us believe; but it’s a point beyond which the remedies become increasingly harder if not impossible to define and implement.

The challenges related to this issue seem to fall into two buckets: 1) is global warming caused primarily by human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, or are natural causes the primary source of what we’re measuring; and 2) what remedies can we implement now without suffering very serious economic impacts?

It’s hard for me to conclude that human activity isn’t the primary driver for the global warming being measured. Correlated data showing increased population, increased industrialization, particularly in China and India, and the increased burning of hydrocarbon-based fuels seem to point in one direction – the dramatically higher levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere come from us. We are the problem.

As for remedies, there almost assuredly will be economic impacts related to those remedies with the greatest promise to first arrest and then reduce the problem. But that just begs the question: what is cost of failing to implement those remedies? That brings us to the question, just how dire is the situation? Gore and his allies would have us believe that we must act within the next ten years or the damage will be irreversible and cataclysmic impacts will naturally follow. I don’t know enough to accept or reject that prediction, but I know enough to conclude that the issue has to be elevated from the partisan morass into which it has fallen in America and that the U.S. has to engage the rest of the world in an urgent and focused assessment around which some consensus can be formed.

I look to the scientific community to lead the way. It seems to me that scientists should be able to come to essentially the same conclusion given the same data and means of inquiry into that data. That comment assumes that the leading scientists can remain unsullied by political agenda so they can speak in an unfettered way, guided only by their objective findings and their subjective interpretations of those findings as independent scientists. At this point, I’m hearing far, far more scientific concurrence with the content of An Inconvenient Truth than I’m hearing dissent.

If that concurrence not only holds up but swells to a crescendo then the burden shifts squarely to the policy makers in national capitols around the world. If they remain paralyzed by partisanship or discredited dogmas, then the burden rests on us. We will have to convey a clear message that the politicians must act in a responsible way and that we will hold them immediately accountable for failing to do so. If we’re the problem; then we’re also the solution. Unfortunately, our legislators hate to conclude that we’re the cause of our own problems; they’re equally averse to concluding that we’re also the solution to our own problems. Those conclusions require them to speak and act in a responsible and timely manner, which they’re loath to do until they have no other choice.

Our legislators also tend to act like parents who know best for all the little kids in the country, meaning all of us. They speak and act as if they’re watching out for the best interests of children and wards of the state who are incapable of assessing and prioritizing their own needs. The highest levels of the Bush administration, for example, have recently said that public opinion is not relevant in determining what to do next in Iraq. I suspect they’re equally dismissive of public opinion on issues like global warming – at least until it reaches a critical mass that represents winning or losing at the polls. Science may not matter in the halls of Congress and the West Wing, but votes do.

Oh, yeah, money matters, too. Right now the primary reason for not doing much of anything in the U.S. regarding global warming appears to be that “it will cost too much.” Well, money matters to all us – but it’s not the only thing that matters and it often isn’t what matters the most. We voters are not nearly as self-centered as we’re made out to be, and when we are self-centered it’s often about the health and well being of our children and grandchildren.

It behooves all of us to pay close and careful attention to global warming and its impacts so that we quickly become an informed electorate who can speak loud and clear enough for the denizens of Foggy Bottom in Washington, DC to hear a messenger and a message that cannot be dismissed. Go see the movie, or read the book – it’s a convenient time to learn, speak up and take action. After all, we need to be ready to answer the tough questions that will be posed by our grandkids.