For some time I have thought that global warming represents a distraction from a greater threat: the looming energy crunch and the possibility our society will be unable to adapt to a world without plentiful cheap energy. I now realise that I am wrong. Both dangers are real and present, but global warming is the greater of the two.
There is little doubt that the laws of supply and demand will drive energy prices up. The depletion of the oil fields in the Middle East with their easy flowing, high quality crude means that oil companies now must drill deeper, in the most extreme environments to get at oil of a much meaner quality. The technical difficulties involved and the decreased fraction of energy extracted (since energy is consumed getting at and refining oil. The harder it is to get and the worse the quality of the oil, the more energy gets used in the extraction process.) means oil prices will steadily rise. But drill they do. And the oil keeps coming and we keep burning it. Other fossil fuels also continue to be extracted including less conventional sources including shale gas and the bituminous sands of Canada (in an act of environmental devastation which is barely comprehensible). We may have to pay more, but it doesn’t look like we’re going to let up on fossil fuels anytime soon.
With fossil fuel comes CO2. Lots and lots of CO2 (I still remember the surprise when I explained to a group of senior managers at my company that the calculations they had dismissed as incorrect were right: you DO get roughly 2.75 tonnes of CO2 for every tonne of jet fuel you burn). We keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere like it’s an open sewer. And CO2 causes global warming. Despite what talkback radio would have you believe and despite the media’s idiotic insistence on presenting both sides of the “argument” when there really isn’t one, the science is unequivocal: global warming is real and it’s happening right now.
The more I look into the consequences of global warming, the more frightening it gets. As it stands, if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, we’d still be in for a roughly 2 degree rise in the average global temperature. The alarming thing is anything much higher than this must be avoided at almost any cost. If we keep emitting to the point where the average temperature rises by, say, 4 degrees the consequences for the planet and civilisation would be utterly devastating. But 4 degrees doesn’t sound too bad, right? Well, the key word here is AVERAGE. Studies show the temperature rise in the Arctic would almost certainly be several times higher than the average, greatly shrinking both the sea ice and the ice caps in Greenland causing sea levels to rise. Even more frightening is that temperature rises in this range will trigger a number of positive feedback loops such as the release of methane, a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, trapped within the ice.
Plants which suddenly find themselves trapped in environments beyond the temperature ranges they can survive in will die (trees can’t run), releasing huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. As the sea becomes more acidic from absorbing atmospheric CO2 (a significant fraction of CO2 released into the atmosphere is absorbed by the sea), the mechanism by which this CO2 is absorbed will slow down. A large fraction of the world’s species will become extinct as their natural habitats alter at rates millions of times faster than the rate they are able to adapt. Large regions of the planet will become virtually uninhabitable to humans due to the heat, drought, sea level rises and increasingly savage weather patterns (including, in all likelihood, Australia and southern Europe to give two alarming examples). Modern civilisation will struggle to cope and large scale conflict, as well as starvation, is a distinct possibility.
I bet a lot of you are thinking: “come on, that view is a bit extreme! Surely it’s not that bad?!”. For arguments sake, let’s just say that the scenario I’ve outlined is only 10% possible. Would you put a gun to your children’s head knowing it was 10% likely to go off, because for many millions of today’s children the result is likely to be the same. The reality is the science tells us that the chances of my scenario are much more probable than 10%. Evidently the time for radical action is now.
Change is frightening, especially when for many of us the cruel reality is that change will mean the end of our present day careers and the complete alteration of the lives we have become comfortable with (since I work in aviation, I am almost certainly included in this number), but change we must or within our life times we will witness the beginning of the complete alteration of our planetary conditions and the beginning of the end of modern civilisation. The stakes are that high.
It frustrates me no end that most NZers shrug and say “Well, we can’t do anything about it, we are so small and our impact on the world negligible. Besides, our contribution to global emissions is tiny anyway”. To the last point, I would say: our contributions to emissions are only small because we lack weight of numbers. If every citizen of the world polluted like an average NZer, the planet would be in big trouble. To the first point I would say: bullshit! NZ has never let its small size be an issue when it’s something relatively easy. We boast about how we punch above our weight on the sporting field and we can, and should, punch above our weight in leading the world in transitioning to a low emission economy. In the short term it will be expensive and hard, in the long term it will be worthwhile both environmentally and economically. In many ways, it is our best chance of success in a rapidly changing world. In many other ways, by not doing it we doom our children.
