After watching Gore's TED lecture (ted.com), a then global-warming-depressed student e-mailed me today to ask what I thought we could do to fight global warming. He's in Iceland right now and he said he could imagine the disappearance of the small islands surrounding the mainland. He said he's recycling, planting trees, and riding his bike, but it all seems so little compared to the magnitude of the problem. Johnnyrook's book review (Right and Wrong in a Warming World) reminded me of the moral dimensions of the issue, so it seemed worth repeating here what I wrote to him...
Every little bit helps. It's like we're on a huge ship and we need to get
everyone to one side so that we don't hit the iceberg but we're having
trouble convincing people that there is an iceberg and that even if there
was that moving everyone to the same side would solve the problem. But every individual who demonstrates a commitment and who tells someone else what they are doing and who serves as an example to others brings us closer to the human tipping point where people act.
We're talking about putting the brakes on a system that has been building
for many centuries and that is currently accelerating. The train has not
only left the station, it is going downhill around a curve and towards a
tunnel! It takes a tremendous global will and a tremendous sense of personal responsibility towards our planet and each other to begin to solve the problem. Climate change is not a scientific problem as much as it's a social problem.
That said, the question is whether we can overcome our selfishness,
greediness, laziness, and stubbornness to solve this social problem. Our
record is not encouraging given that we haven't solved poverty or addressed water needs or eradicated curable diseases or learned to live in peace and harmony. Climate change will test us as a species and the real question is: can we survive?
I will freely admit that I am not wholly optimistic...yet. There's just no
hard evidence that we have begun to slow the pace of emissions. Some
countries are doing better--and the high price of gas is pushing new ideas
and new behaviors--but we're not quite where we should be. Bush's call for
more drilling, China's drive to open new coal plants, India's push for
giving everyone cars, and our continued government inaction on climate
change present enormous roadblocks.
Nevertheless...I feel morally compelled to do what I can, regardless of what everyone else is doing. I prefer to be part of the solution, not part of the problem, and I just hope and pray that people wake up. So I compost
vegetable matter and as much of my grass clippings as I can, I recycle
plastic and newspaper, I take 5-minute showers, I insulated my attic, put in new weatherproofed doors, I tuned up my A/C, I combine errands that require a car, I ride my bike to school and the supermarket, I use and provide electronic documents as much as I can, I take my vacations locally, I avoid foods that travel far, I grow my own vegetables, I support organizations that plant trees, I write letters to my representatives, I teach about the subject, and I just keep trying to think about ways that I can tell everyone I know how to reduce their carbon footprint and ways that I can reduce my own footprint.
As long as you keep doing the things you are doing, and keep setting an
example, and keep looking for new ways to reduce your carbon footprint, then you are doing everything that you can. It's a long hard path and it can't be solved by one person, by a thousand people, or even a million people. It takes billions of people. So we can be one of those billion and we can keep doing everything we can. I do think that as the problem gets worse, as people see how it is affecting their daily lives and pocketbooks, that they will begin to take action. The worry is that it won't be soon enough to avoid submerging those low-lying islands, displacing hundreds of millions of people living along coastlines, and to prevent the kind of catastrophic weather we are beginning to experience. But if that's what happens, we'll have to adapt. So life might not be the way we live it today, but we'll still be alive, and hopefully, smarter, and maybe just a little more appreciative of each other and our natural world. If Earth's climate becomes our "enemy", then maybe humans can unite around a common cause. Earth and humanity will become one, finally. It's possible...
Anyways, that's my take on it. Hopefully, it's more encouraging than
discouraging! We've got a lot of work to do and we just have to take it one step at a time.