The climate problem

Is maybe not what you think

There are good reasons to be worried about climate change. And there are bad reasons.

The good reasons include the expense of adapting human activities to higher temperatures, greater variability in weather, and rising sea levels. The expense is measured in terms of money and mortality. The money cost is obvious. The mortality cost reflects the fact that adaptations won't be swift enough, especially in poor countries, to keep people from dying in excess numbers.

The bad reasons include the idea that we humans are somehow insulting Mother Nature and disturbing her equilibrium. This idea is bad on two counts.

First, there is no Mother Nature. There's just us and the other species that inhabit the third planet from the sun. We are as much a part of the natural order as any other species. And we are hardly the most disruptive critters to occupy a niche here. The cyanobacteria that caused the Great Oxidation Event of two billion years ago—also called the Oxygen Holocaust for burning up nearly every living thing on earth—make us seem like pikers in our fiddling with the thermostat.

Second, what looks to us like equilibrium is equilibrium only on a human time scale. The earth has been a lot hotter and a lot colder than it is today, and a lot hotter than it is likely to become in the next few centuries. Climate activists often complain that humans today don't take the long view of things. They're right. We don't. We don't make investments now that will pay off a generation or two from now. This is one of our most predictable faults. 

But they fall into a similar mistake when they measure current temperatures against a particular pre-industrial benchmark. To treat the climate in 1750 as the norm from which we mustn't stray too far is itself short-sighted. Why 1750? Why not 1000? Or 20,000 years ago? Or 2 million years ago?

Another way of viewing our current relationship with climate is to view it not as a climate problem but as an adaptation problem. Even if we had never spewed any carbon into the atmosphere, we would have to adjust to a changing climate eventually. We've already done so. The difference in temperature between the last glacial maximum and the present is greater than any projected anthropogenic change. In an analogy that is admittedly unfair to well-meaning climate reformers, it's as if our Ice Age ancestors asked their neighbors to put out their fires lest the glaciers melt.

There's nothing special about the climate circa 1750. It's simply the one we adapted to. We could adapt to another. Which brings us back to the original point, that we're dealing with an adaptation problem rather than a climate problem per se. 

Yes, it's going to be expensive to adapt. Yes, people will suffer and some will die in the adaptation process. It's worth noting, however, that humans have died from weather-related stresses as long as there have been humans. And simply as a practical matter, given our lack of progress on the climate front, we will save more lives by devoting at least part of our attention to adaptation than by betting everything on our ability to curb carbon.

It's going to take time to build seawalls and levees and perhaps new cities. People will be moving from one country to another under climate pressure. They already are. It won't be easy to adjust our politics to such movements. Which is why we'd better get started.

Climate reformers are leery of such advice. It sounds defeatist. But it's defeatist only if one accepts their premise that what needs saving is an arbitrarily chosen moment in the climate history of the earth. If one focuses on people and what's best for them, it's actually a hopeful perspective. 

We humans have a long history of successful adaptation. It's why we're still here. Our record on climate control is dubious, to say the least. 

So if you're worried about climate change, more power to you. Cut as much carbon as you can from your lifestyle. Any progress you make will be appreciated by the people doing the heavier lifting for our collective future: figuring out how we will adapt, once again, to the changing world around us.