“Climate change is already affecting the American people in far-reaching ways. ... (It is) disrupting people’s lives and damaging some sectors of the economy.”
– 2014 National Climate Assessment report to the U.S. Congress
Well, in a weird way, it’s nice to be validated.
For the last several years, I, along with other environmentalists and many climate scientists, have been saying what the most recent National Climate Assessment has confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt: Global warming-driven climate change has arrived.
I say the validation is weird because I wish it were otherwise. Who wants to be validated for writing dozens of columns from, essentially, Dr. Doom’s perspective? Lately, I’ve been billing myself as the guy nobody wants to hear from.
I say “beyond a shadow of a doubt” because of the way the assessment was conducted. It was written by 250 leading scientists from every relevant field – climatology, hydrology, soils science, agronomy, ecology and so on. They were overseen by an advisory committee that, along with a number of scientific “superstars,” included representatives from a private equity firm, the Rockefeller Foundation, ConocoPhilips and Chevron oil companies, Monsanto and the U.S. departments of Defense and Homeland Security.
It is important to note, too, that the assessment wasn’t commissioned by the White House. The U.S. Congress, where the lower House is controlled by a clique of business-as-usual climate-change deniers, authorizes the periodic assessment.
The assessment’s findings are based on exhaustive documentation of current climate conditions and their effects throughout the U.S. – and the picture isn’t pretty: unpredictable extreme weather, rising tides, droughts, floods, snowpack loss, the northern migration of disease vectors, ecosystem collapse – you already know the picture if you’ve followed the climate news.
Still, I highly recommend Googling the National Climate Assessment and, at a minimum, reading its excellent 12-page overview along with your area’s regional report. You’ll find it sobering, and you might start thinking about how we can respond.
Recently, I’ve been asked to give talks on that very topic – how to respond – at a local university and my town’s Chamber of Commerce, which wants to hear about climate-related business opportunities. But as much as I’d like to change out of my Dr. Doom costume and into my “Solutions Guy” clothes, the truth is that I don’t have a clue – other than the obvious (and unlikely) drastic and immediate reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate at least some of the anticipated damage.
The problem is, despite paying the overblown fees of some “risk-management consultants,” nobody knows what to expect. Climate change is erratic by nature.
Maybe the Western drought will be alleviated by the currently developing El Niño, which could bring increased precipitation to the region. But maybe that precipitation will be so severe that it razes half the 2015 crops.
What I do know is species that generalize (rather than becoming over specialized) and gene pools that diversify tend to be survivors in the evolutionary rat race. Next time, we’ll explore what our species can learn from them at our ecological house.
Philip S. Wenz, who grew up in Durango and Boulder, now lives in Corvallis, Ore., where he teaches and writes about environmental issues. www.your-ecological-house.com.
