Global warming is a big, unwelcome idea. Science has only recently accepted global warming as an uncontested fact, yet it is already changing the face of the planet. Severe hurricanes, cyclones and flooding have become more frequent. Butterflies are migrating north and so is malaria. Sober scientists tell us that within the next few generations, parts of the planet may warm by eight degrees centigrade. This doesn’t just mean more sunshine and milder winters in New York and London. Instead it means radical and severe fluctuations in all weather patterns. Imagine a pot of water, cool and still. As you heat it on the stove, it gets increasingly turbulent. The atmosphere is just like this: as it heats up, storms become more frequent and violent. Insurance companies are already paying out billions more every year in claims resulting from newly savage floods and hurricanes. As sea levels rise, coastal areas are at increasing risk. If we get to the point where the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melt, sea level will rise 80 meters, according to the United States Geologic Survey. Goodbye Washington, New York, London, Paris and Tokyo. Will this happen in the next 100 years? Probably not, but the real answer is that we don’t know. Glaciers around the world and both polar ice caps are melting faster than anyone expected, and there are cycles we don’t fully understand that could speed up the melting. Global warming increases uncertainty. Early forecasts suggested that warmer temperatures and more carbon dioxide would make the American grain belt more productive. This may be one reason the American government works against controls on global warming. But new studies suggest the opposite of increased productivity—that soaring temperatures will knock grain production severely, leaving a hungry America. Through storms, disease and famine, global warming may precipitate millions of deaths. In this way it is grindingly similar to diseases like AIDS and cancer. What makes global warming different, however, is that it represents a fundamental change in our life as a species. Global warming signals humanity’s loss of innocence. All other species remain innocent. They have not learned to force change in the biosphere. We have. We now move more soil every year than all the world's rivers and release more carbon dioxide than all the world's volcanoes. We control most of the productive capacity of the planet's land surface. People have become a geophysical force, molding the planet. The Garden of Eden story makes sense as a contemporary tale. We evolved in paradise. Our planet was paradise indeed, the only life-rich planet in the Universe we know. We are Adam and Eve. When we ate the forbidden apple from the tree of knowledge, we gained the ability to manipulate life on the planet to suit our own purposes. Global warming is the first serious sign we may be driven out of Eden. If that is the dark side, the bright side is that global warming offers us a chance to mature as a species. In social terms we are adolescent. Like rambunctious teenagers, we have been testing our powers. Global warming requires that we grow up fast. We need to change our behavior in fundamental ways to save a multitude of species, and ensure that our descendants survive. To reduce the impacts of global warming, we need to ratchet down our greenhouse gas emissions considerably and quickly. Instead, our global emissions are rising rapidly, led by America. The profits of oil and car companies would be affected by the needed changes. What are the chances that our power elite will choose long-term survival against short-term gain? George W. Bush denied for years that human actions contribute to global warming. Not long ago he recanted. One might have hoped that he would then take reasonable steps to control emissions. Bush was so impressed, however, with possible short-term harm to American business, that he reached the conclusion that we should do nothing to cool the greenhouse. Bush’s view has a fiddle-while-Rome-burns quality. It would be startling were it not so predictable. It is not easy to wake up to the need for fundamental change. We resist this need in our own lives. An alcoholic denies he has a drinking problem. Only when he hits bottom can he change. Even then, most alcoholics do not change. At the level of national policy we are as addicted to massive carbon emissions as an alcoholic is to his drink. For the alcoholic to change means profound psychological and physical readjustment. The same is true for our society. In America, Bush pushes for increased carbon emissions knowing it is future generations that will suffer not him. When it comes to global warming, Bush is the alcoholic reaching for the bottle. Will we slash our emissions? Will we listen to the call of reason and choose change, rather than wait for catastrophe to force change upon us? If I thought it impossible, I would not be writing this essay. If I thought it likely, I would also not be writing this essay. The saddest course would be for us to wait for our emotions to tell us to act on global warming. They will eventually do so. A point will come when we are excited by fear to change, but that will only happen after catastrophe. Regional catastrophes will not do—they will be dismissed as merely local phenomena. If we wait for our emotions to convince us to act, we will have to wait for global catastrophe. At that point, it will be hard to re-enter Eden.
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