Read this quote, and try to imagine who said it, and when: "The implications of a rapid secular change in climate are so numerous and so awful as to defy imagination." Barack Obama? Al Gore?
Here's a little more: "Agriculture, industry, business, and all the rest of man's activities would need to undergo dramatic adjustment if the climate of the world changed very greatly in a generation."
Okay, that reference to "man's" activities sounds a little dated. It's actually a quote from a standard reference in Climatology, Critchfield's General Climatology (2nd edition, from 1966). Critchfield goes on to say that "gradual upward trends in mean temperature of only a few degrees would alter the vegetation patterns of the world, and major migrations of animal life might occur. Some plant and animal species might be extinguished. Continued warming in the polar regions would surely melt the existing icecaps and raise the levels of the oceans."
From 1966! And Critchfield has successfully prognosticated the climate crisis into the future by about 50 years. So: now that it's happening, and folks are getting on-board, what are we going to do about it?
My purpose for the last several years has been mostly education, with a little activism thrown in. I'm voyaging outside of my discipline, talking to public groups about climate change, visiting libraries, etc. The general public needs to be informed. But reality kicks in every now and then: we've known about this for decades, and the changes have been evident for at least a decade now to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. Yet the public remains firmly entrenched in a "ho-hum" attitude (encouraged by the fossil fuel companies and many of the talking heads on talk radio).
Sandy kicked the butts of New Yorkers, "But among New Yorkers, as among the rest of us, the idea that the sea is going to rise -- a lot -- hasn't really sunk in yet. Of the thousands of people in New York State whose homes were badly damaged or destroyed by Sandy's surge, only 10 to 15 percent are expected to accept the state's offer to buy them out at their homes' pre-storm value. The rest plan to rebuild." ("Rising Seas", National Geographic, 2013)
Did we forget to put out the message? "Climate change is coming, the seas are rising, and soon your property will be underwater!" No, I think that the message went out. So what's the problem?
Perhaps the sense in Americans' minds is that "it can't happen here; it can't happen to me...." (although you'd imagine that few who went through Sandy could turn around and say that).
The good news is that the numbers tell a tale of a sea-change in American attitudes about climate change. A recent study (2012) conducted by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication (universities have centers for climate change communication!) found that
But, with climate changing "very greatly" in a generation, and with Critchfield predicting that we must make "dramatic adjustment" in our activities, what are people doing in the way of "dramatic adjustment"? The answer is "not much".
I have nieces and nephews who are going forth to the universities and preparing for careers in the same old sectors as their parents did. Many of those sectors may not be around in a few years, victims of a "dramatic adjustment". Many of us (including myself) are invested in retirement plans that likely won't be there for us when we retire. Which plans are invested in Miami real estate? You'd want to avoid those....
It's obvious, that last line, right? You've heard about home owners being "under water" on their mortgages? Well Miami's headed underwater, literally, as even National Geographic will tell you. And there's no "bail out" (sorry about that, in several senses) on the horizon.
Imagine that you're on the train tracks, along with a bunch of other folks -- friends, family, complete strangers -- and you hear the train a comin' -- comin' down the tracks. You start by warning them: "Hey there's a train coming!" Some of them pretend not to hear; others ignore you; some deny the existence of trains; a very few perk up their ears.
The train comes closer, and you increase your efforts -- you shout out about the danger; you draw pictures of trains colliding with people; you pantomime train disasters you recall from history. Yet people continue to mill about the tracks.
Finally, with the train barreling down on you at 50 mph, you decide that you need to jump, and you may grab your brother or your mother on your way into the ditch (perhaps to their utter annoyance), just before the train wipes out the rest of the folks on the track.
Is this a legitimate analogy for the climate crisis? If so, at what stage are we right now? What will a wipe out look like? Is there any safe haven on the side of the tracks, or are we dooming ourselves by our own actions? Today, in the news feed of The Daily Climate we find the following: "The oceans are acidifying at the fastest rate in 300 million years. How worried should we be?" Let me give you the answer: we should be screaming about this locomotive at the top of our lungs. But we're not. We're acting as though nothing is wrong -- "business-as-usual".