The Politics of Global Warming

Al Gore's star is finally in the ascendancy.  He was proven preminiscent in his warnings about the dangers of invading Iraq, he's the subject of a draft movement to make him the Democratic nominee for President, and his signature issue, the threat of global warming, is finally garnering considerable concern.  The Live Earth concerts this weekend will give him yet another stage from which to promote his environmental agenda.  What's amazing, however, is that it took so long to get to this point.  The Iraq War is relatively recent, of course, but Gore has been warning about the dangers due to our greenhouse gas emissions for decades with little attention paid to his concerns.

The possibility of catastrophic climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions (particularly CO2) is obvious to anyone with a basic ability to reason (so long as earlier bias does not unduly impinge upon the thought process anyway).  We know that CO2 traps heat.  We know that we're adding CO2 to the atmosphere.  Based on these two bits of information, one must reasonably conclude that we may be causing the Earth to warm.  Of course there are other additional effects that result from our adding CO2 to the atmosphere.  For one, the CO2 is making the oceans more acidic, an effect that is harming sea life.  There may be other unforeseen effects that will mitigate the warming effects of CO2 and prevent climate change, or there may be effects that reinforce the warming due to CO2 and cause catastrophic climate change.  What is certain, however, is that we're performing an experiment, with potentially calamitous results, on Earth's entire atmosphere and all it's ecosystems.

Given the potential problems that could result from such an experiment - and their global implications - it's amazing that the world's political leaders were not forced to address our CO2 addiction far sooner.  After all, Gore has been warning us for decades.  And, more importantly, atmospheric CO2 levels have been rising at a relatively steady rate since before Gore was born.  A scientific consensus that this might be a problem has existed since the 1980s. 

Why then has it taken 2 decades, billions of tons of emitted CO2, Hurricane Katrina, and a war in the Middle-East for us to realize that it might be wiser for us to make a real effort to develop alternative energy sources? 

The answer is multifold.  First, many wealthy people in charge of oil companies, car companies, utilities, and other such polluters have a strong financial incentive to try to cover up the problem.  In order to do so, they've spent billions of dollars on lobbyists, false science, and political campaigns. 

Second, the news media has a strong belief in objectivity - a belief that sometimes causes them to present both sides of a debate as if they were equally valid - even when they are not.  In the case of global warming, on one side stands almost every scientist making the argument that it might be a problem and that we should take reasonable steps to mitigate it, while on the other side stands a very small number of mostly discredited scientists (who derive most of their funding from CO2 polluters) who argue that global warming might not be a problem - and that we shouldn't do anything until we know more.  The media has tended to pretend that the existence of this small second group means that the scientific community is divided on global warming..

Third, the public does not understand science - nor does it trust scientists.  This is reflected in the opinion polls that show that over 50% of Americans do not believe in evolution.  It is also reflected in the argument over whether creationism or intelligent design can reasonably be taught in science classes.  No one who understands science can reasonably doubt that evolution is the most likely fact-based rationale for the proliferation of life on our planet.  Likewise, no one who understands science can argue that creationism or intelligent design qualify as scientific hypotheses.  The public's scientific illiteracy means that when scientists discuss the "theory of global warming" much of the public thinks that a "theory" is simply a hypothesis - one of many reasonable explanations for a phenomenon.  Because it does not understand science, the public is easily mislead by pundits and purveyors of false science (whose job is made even easier by the fact that the public doesn't tend to do much fact checking).

Fourth, aside from Al Gore, politicians showed very little leadership on the issue.  Republicans were (and are) clearly in the pocket of the oil companies.  But the Democrats were (and are) similarly beholden to other companies and to labor unions, both of which maintain a lesser level of opposition to anti-global warming legislation.  Furthermore, the Democratic party has a tendency toward timidity, so it took decades for Democrats to muster the will to risk political damage in order to prevent global warming. 

Now that global warming is finally broadly recognized for the threat that it is, we must make hard sacrifices to limit it's damage.  Al Gore spent two decades warning us - two decades in which we obfuscated and delayed.  Further delay will make the necessary sacrifices far more onerous.

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