Why Climate Change?
Tipping points, downstream effects, diffuse impact, oh my
I’ve written a lot of words on how we can combat climate change. For a change of pace, I’m going to talk about why.
If you’re reading this, you probably don’t to be convinced that climate change is (a) real, and (b) bad. So why discuss it? As always in this blog, I’m working toward clarity. What exactly do we mean by “fighting climate change”, or more to the point, what should we mean? By digging into the reasons that it’s important, we can clarify exactly which climate-changey problems deserve priority. Not all of them do.
So. Why is it important to address climate change?
It’s an especially big problem. I’m not going to bother expanding on this. The world’s ills come in a variety of sizes; not all of them are this important.
As a society, we mostly deal with problems reactively. That won’t cut it here, so we need to make a special effort to get away from business as usual. (When we do manage to be proactive, it’s usually based on past experience – warding off problems we’ve encountered before.) Climate change is a new, sneaky problem, so none of our usual problem-identification strategies work, and society’s default response is an epic fail.
It’s a relatively new problem, meaning there’s lots of room for breakthroughs. Daunting though climate change might seem, it’s something we can actually solve.
In the rest of this post, I’ll explore the factors that make climate change different than most challenges the world faces.
Diffuse Impact
The Flint water crisis began when the city of Flint, Michigan changed its water source from the Detroit water system to the Flint River. Broadly speaking, the problems stemmed from actions taken in Flint, affected people in Flint, and were eventually resolved in Flint. State officials were heavily involved, but the circle of cause and effect was confined to the state of Michigan (the federal EPA does get some blame for failing to step in).
The impact of climate change is diffuse. California’s droughts seem to be exacerbated by global warming, and greenhouse gasses emitted by California contribute to that warming. But most of the impact of California’s greenhouse emissions is felt elsewhere, and emissions from all over the world impact California. Californians don’t have much direct incentive to clean up their act.
More succinctly: a cow burping in Nebraska contributes to rising sea levels in Bangladesh. The natural feedback mechanisms that guide much of our economy and society won’t respond properly to climate change. We need a coordinated, global effort, and those don’t come easy.
Delayed Consequences
If I touch a hot stove, reflex will cause me to immediately jerk my hand back. The bad action (touching the stove) provides immediate feedback (ouch!).
If a city under-invests in road maintenance, it won’t take too long for potholes to appear and voters to complain. The feedback isn’t immediate, but it will arrive in time to correct course.
Much of the carbon emitted during World War II is still in the atmosphere today. Today’s emissions will still be contributing to sea level rise in the year 2100. Climate change is slow, but inexorable; our normal decision-making processes aren’t up to the task of regulating actions whose impact is measured in centuries.
Tipping Points
The greenhouse gasses we’ve added to the atmosphere generate an enormous variety of effects, direct and indirect. On balance, to date, these effects tend to partially counteract the warming impact. For instance, the oceans have been absorbing much of our CO2 emissions; this has negative effects (see: ocean acidification), but it does reduce warming.
Some secondary effects of climate change actually accelerate warming. Ice is shinier than water, so as Arctic ice melts, the exposed ocean absorbs more heat than the ice did.
A tipping point is the moment when a gradual, reversible change becomes a rapid, irreversible change. The moment when a corroded bridge collapses, or a cracked dam bursts. Climate change has the potential to trigger multiple tipping points. If the Gulf Stream stops, we may not be able to start it again. If we lose enough of the Amazon rainforest, the climate of that region may shift permanently, making reforestation impossible.
The scariest tipping points are those that further accelerate climate change. Loss of rainforest releases CO2 into the atmosphere. Thawing of the vast northern permafrost could release catastrophic amounts of CO2 and methane. In a worst-case scenario, these tipping points could cause warming to continue even if and when we eliminate our own emissions.
Tipping points are an extreme case of delayed consequences: if you wait until the problem is visible, it is far too late to correct it.
Downstream Effects
Problems breed problems. Failing public schools exacerbate income inequality. If you can’t afford to maintain your car, you might not be able to get to work. But climate change sits upstream of everything. Environmental justice, refugee crises, habitat loss, fire, famine, drought, flood, disease, budget deficits, rising oceans, declining snowpacks. Just about every form of natural disaster except “earthquake” is amplified by climate change, and these in turn exacerbate an enormous variety of social and political ills.
The Upshot
The core mechanism of climate change can be summarized as: we emit carbon dioxide, methane, and other GHGs (greenhouse gasses) into the atmosphere, which disperse across the globe and cause it to retain more heat, distorting weather patterns for centuries.
This has diffuse impact, delayed consequences, tipping points, and downstream effects. All of this causes society’s normal processes to drastically under-prioritize the issue.
Happily, because it’s a new problem, there is room for rapid progress. We’re already seeing this – not yet in overall emissions, but in the technological changes that should soon lead to reduced emissions. If we can only manage to focus on the problem, we can beat it.
A lot of other things get lumped under the umbrella of fighting climate change: “adaptation” (adapting to the changing environment, e.g. by building seawalls to protect coastal regions from sea level rise), preserving biodiversity, eliminating non-GHG pollutants, and so on. These are important topics, but if they don’t check all of the same boxes, they may not rise to the same level of importance.
I’ve tried to lay out a framework for evaluating which climate-change-y problems deserve priority. In an upcoming post, I hope to apply this to the topic of climate adaptation. How should we divide our efforts between mitigation (reducing emissions) and adaptation?
It is fascinating to see you try to make sense of such a wicked problem.