I hope not, but it's hard to find a basis for optimism after reading James Hansen's book and looking at the current American political situation. Hansen's prescriptions for averting a climate catastrophe are tough to meet, and at the moment there is a political backlash against bold government endeavors such as these. Right now, taking action on climate change is largely perceived as one competing political issue among many at best, and as a power-grab based on tainted science at worst. Hansen argues that maintaining the human civilization that developed after the last ice age depends on us stabilizing the climate.
It was James Hansen's testimony before congress in 1988 that brought global warming into the public square as an issue, and he has been at the center of the shouting match ever since. He begins the book by recounting his efforts to convince the political leadership of the importance of tackling climate change in the Bush Administration. Unfortunately, the political appointees in NASA did all they could to keep him from expressing the views in a public setting, using a law about government employees engaging in political campaigns. Hansen expressly says that he prefers to stick to the science, but that the problem is so daunting that he had to speak out.
Hansen actually talks about the science behind climate change, and makes it relatively easy for readers to understand. With a large amount of Co2 emissions, heat is trapped in the atmosphere, and there's an energy imbalance between how much heat is coming into the earth from the sun and how much is radiated back into space- thus resulting in the temperature warming up. So Co2 is a climate "forcing" as he puts it. There are many kinds of climate forcings, many of them natural, but as Hansen points out, human Co2 emissions outpace them by several orders of magnitude. What has Hansen so concerned about the present situation is his work with paleo-climate data, which, he says, are more important than climate models, useful though they may be. He persuasively argues that the last mass-extinction coincided with release of powerful methane hydrates in the ocean, and that this led to amplifying feedback loops, and that we are in danger of pushing the climate to a similar tipping point.
The solutions he presents are a tall order to meet, and frankly I think they will be nearly impossible in the current political situation. First and foremost, we need to cut carbon emissions to 350 ppm to avoid pushing the climate past a tipping point, and cap-and-trade won't get us there. The "offsets" are based on phantom emissions reductions in the future, which are rubber-stamped by an international body and then sold to other companies so that they can emit more carbon- most of the targeted "offsets" are rarely met, and the energy efficiency they would have achieved in any case without the cap-and-trade. What he proposes is a tax-and-dividend, (or fee-and-dividend)- a gradually rising price on carbon collected by the government, and proceeds distributed to citizens. The idea is to create an incentive for a drastically reduced carbon economy because, as he put it in an NPR interview, as long as fossil fuels are cheaper, people will continue to use them. Second, we need to phase out coal- put a moratorium on all new coal plants unless they are built with the capacity to completely capture their carbon emissions. Energy efficiency is an important aspect too, but people buying more efficient light bulbs and cars is not going to fix this. Perhaps most controversially among environmentalists, he backs the increased use of nuclear power to meet our electricity needs; he is all for wind and solar as part of the solution, but as of now they have not shown enough consistency in meeting energy needs.
What makes it particularly difficult for me to maintain optimism that a political solution to this is going to be found is what Hansen says about special interests and the necessity of public pressure. He is very critical of the way special interests have influenced the way environmental legislation is crafted, and of the way even organizations such as the Environmental Defense Fund have a "Washington mentality" which prevents what needs to be done from being done; i.e., settling for cap-and-trade and for capturing carbon emissions to be added to new coal plants "eventually." Unfortunately, the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United does not bode well for Hansen's hopes. Furthermore, he says that there needs to be public pressure for the best legislation, and perhaps even civil disobedience directed at coal companies. Unfortunately, at the moment the populist winds are not blowing in this direction. The people who see climate change as the important issue that Hansen does are in a small minority. And the problem is that by the time climate change causes disastrous effects, it will be too late to do much about it. There may perhaps be some technological breakthrough in energy or in carbon capture that can do away with coal's carbon emissions. Moreover, the political scene is as chaotic and nonlinear as our planet's climate, so things may change yet. In any case, well-informed citizens owe it to themselves to read this important book.
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