Collide-a-scape

Michael Lemonick, a veteran science journalist, has an intriguing op-ed in today’s LA Times. He argues that the severe weather/climate change attribution debate is too simplistic and unhelpfully framed around the wrong question. Here’s a better way to think about this issue, he suggests:

An obese, middle-aged man is running to catch a bus. Suddenly, he clutches his chest, falls to the ground and dies of a massive heart attack. It turns out that he’s a smoker and a diabetic, has high blood pressure, eats a diet high in saturated fat and low in leafy green vegetables, pours salt on everything, drinks too much beer, avoids exercise at all costs and has a father, grandfather and two uncles who also died young of heart attacks.

So what killed him? Most people are savvy enough about health risks to know this is a trick question. You can’t pick out a single cause. His choices and his genes all contributed to the heart attack — but you can say with confidence that the more risk factors that pile up, the more likely it is to end badly.

Somehow, though, people think that it makes sense to ask whether a given extreme weather event — a devastating heat wave or a punishing drought or a deadly torrential rainstorm — is caused by climate change.

That’s a trick question too. Scientists know that the increasing load of greenhouse gases we’re pumping into the atmosphere doesn’t “cause” extreme weather. But it does raise the odds, just as a diet of triple bacon cheeseburgers raises the odds of heart disease.

This sounds reasonable to me. The problem I have with the severe weather/climate debate is that all those other contributing factors Lemonick mentions largely get ignored, so that the global warming angle can remain paramount. For example, when we hear about the imminent “dust-bowl-ification” of the American Southwest or Australia, the discussion does not include the obvious risk of city-building in arid, marginal landscapes, and the kinds of policies in place that put populations there increasingly vulnerable to wildfires, extended droughts, etc.

This is why I think global warming needs to be folded into a larger debate about sustainability. Because if we don’t change our patterns of land use and development, reducing greenhouses gases isn’t going to be enough to save cities like Los Angeles, Miami, or Phoenix.

UPDATE: In the comments, Roger Pielke Jr. mentions something he wrote with Daniel Sarewitz in The New Republic in the early 2000s:

Prescribing emissions reductions to forestall the future effects of disasters is like telling someone who is sedentary, obese, and alcoholic that the best way to improve his health is to wear a seat belt.

UPDATE: Some context from Andy Revkin.

Medical climate metaphors, new, newish and much older.

I had just finished up a post when I came across this 2009 cartoon from USA Today at Andy Revkin’s tumblr site.

I’m betting Andy posted it now because of the  recent BEST news, which has inspired many headlines like this one.

But for me, the cartoon perfectly illustrates the suggestion I offer at the end of my latest post for the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media.

Steve Jobs got us attached to our gadgets. Some suggest that a similar bond needs to happen with sustainability. I explore this theme over at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media.

One of these days, we’re going to have an adult, non-alarmist conversation about population.

That would be a discussion that avoids Soylent Green imagery and talks, instead, about population in place-specific terms (which is how these guys do it). Most public debate on population, however, is conflated with a list of global concerns (peak oil, climate change, resource depletion, etc), which often makes for  a simplistic, despairing conversation. This is my one beef with the Dot Earth theme, which is summarized by the tagline at Andy Revkin’s twitter feed:

Which Comes First, Peak Everything or Peak Us?

Because I see the two problems as separate, though I know this is not conventional wisdom. It’s also a touchy subject. Several years ago, I got into a heated debate with a peer (who is a freelance, environmentally-oriented magazine writer) when I argued that, for the United States, consumption was a much bigger problem than population. I had said that suburban sprawl and our materialistic, big carbon footprint lifestyles–not too many people–was way more responsible for loss of wildlife habitat and decline of ecosystems. After ten minutes, we were practically shouting at each other.

Which brings me to this opinion column by William McGurn, in today’s Wall Street Journal. He looks back at previous population scaremongering from three decades ago and notes:

The one difference between the 1970s and today is this: Back then, the worry was that poor nations would never advance. Today we know they can and are developing.

That’s precisely the fear: that as people are eating better and living longer and making their way up the ladder, they will want more of the things that we take for granted–cars, air conditioners, refrigerators, and so on. Indeed, the really big dreamers might even hope one day to have for their families the kind of carbon-footprint maximizing manse that Mr. [Thomas] Friedman has for his family in Maryland.

That would be this kings castle.

This is the ultimate challenge for Friedman and other messengers of peak doom: articulating legitimate global capacity concerns in a way that puts everybody on a level playing ground. In other words, whatever prescriptive medicine you are calling on for society to take, you better be prepared to take it yourself. Otherwise, you shouldn’t consider yourself a credible messenger.

UPDATE: A clarification from Revkin:

To be clear, my notion of “Peak Us” is about the cresting of both human numbers and appetites.

Is Thomas Friedman, the influential, globe-trotting NYT columnist, undergoing a metamorphosis? Because I think the guy who was a champion of economic globalization a decade ago is not the same guy who wrote this column earlier in the week, which is mostly a platform for Paul Gilding, author of a new book called, “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.”

In his column, Friedman writes:

We will realize, he [Gilding] predicts, that the consumer-driven growth model is broken and we have to move to a more happiness-driven growth model, based on people working less and owning less.

Has anybody informed developing countries of this yet? Because last I checked, lots and lots of people in China and elsewhere were becoming happy consumers of cars, air conditioners, and techno-gadgets, just like us.

Oh, whatever. Once they see Americans living like Freegans and not trading up for new smart phones and laptops every two years, I’m sure the Chinese will follow suit.

But back to Friedman, who strikes a Malthusian note in his column, warning that

we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth’s resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future…This is not science fiction. This is what happens when our system of growth and the system of nature hit the wall at once.

Our system of growth. That doesn’t sound like the Friedman of yesteryear. Let’s rewind to 1999:  In “The Lexus and the Olive Tree,” (page 42, paperback version) Friedman intones:

Any society that wants to thrive economically today must constantly be trying to build a better Lexus and driving it out into the world.

As this review of Friedman’s book noted at the time:

The Lexus, the author’s favorite car, symbolizes the drive for prosperity and modernization and the growth of technology and finance.

Well, given his increasing concerns for the earth’s sustainability, I’m sure that Friedman has since bought the hybrid model.

Many have noted the repetitive loop of global climate change talks. I think the global sustainability debate is suffering from the same Groundhog Day syndrome.

Consider that 16 U.N.-sponsored climate summits have taken place since 1995. (The 17th is later this year in South Africa). This is rivaled by 19 annual sessions of the U.N. Committee on Sustainable Development. At the outset of the most recent meeting earlier this month, Sha Zukang, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs said:

Globally, unsustainable consumption and production threatens to exceed the carrying capacity of life support systems.

This particular session concluded on a down note, an outcome similar to that of most international climate meetings. Oh, did I also mention we’re coming up on the 20th anniversary of a landmark sustainability conference?

Which brings me to the gathering last week in Stockholm, Sweden, officially called the

3rd Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability

This convocation produced some media-friendly dramatics and a set of recommendations, called the Stockholm Memorandum, which declared:

Unsustainable patterns of production, consumption, and population growth are challenging the resilience of the planet to support human activity. At the same time, inequalities between and within societies remain high, leaving behind billions with unmet basic human needs and disproportionate vulnerability to global environmental change.

This situation concerns us deeply. As members of the Symposium we call upon all leaders of the 21st century to exercise a collective responsibility of planetary stewardship. This means laying the foundation for a sustainable and equitable global civilization in which the entire Earth community is secure and prosperous.

So where are we headed with all these high-minded (and increasingly urgent) deliberations and proclamations? I thought the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development was supposed to be laying that foundation. Are we to believe that they are any more up to the task of forging global cooperation on ecological issues than the U.N. Framework on Climate Change is with reducing carbon emissions?

At this point, given the history of futility on climate action and sustainable development, what I want to know is this: are we even having the right kind of conversation about our collective stewardship of the planet?

Keep in mind that we’ve been having variations of this conversation since 1972, when a certain landmark report was published. Where does that leave us today?

I’m not sure, but I agree with Andy Revkin when he writes of this new era we live in:

One clear reality is that for a long time to come, Earth is what we choose to make of it, for better or worse.

Indeed. I think recognition of that would be a good starting point for a larger, public debate on sustainability. Another reality, which might then help advance the discussion, is offered by Emma Marris:

For a long time, the assumption among environmentalists is that any place humans had changed — by, say, logging, polluting, introducing new species or killing off old ones — was besmirched and fouled by our touch. It was a fairly simple line of thought. The less the land or sea was altered, the better. Pristine was good.

Now we realize that there are no landscapes or seascapes without human fingerprints. We’ve cleared, plowed and sown synthetic chemicals far and wide. We have changed Earth’s very atmosphere. Perhaps more importantly, science is telling us that the “pristineness” we were chasing was a mirage. Humans have changed ecosystems for millennia (notably, we likely killed off hundreds of large beasts in the Americas, Australia and the Pacific Islands well before Columbus). And ecosystems change over time anyway, with or without us.

So we have a choice. We can write the whole planet off as irrecoverably ruined, or we can redefine “good” and “bad.” And this is where it gets tricky. What “good” replaces pristineness? Biodiversity? Ecosystem services that benefit humans? Historical fidelity? Beauty? The most pleasure for the most sentient species? We are at a juncture in environmental history where we have to define good and bad anew.

That gets us into the realm of values, which is where we need to go eventually.

******

Just a quick note to say that I’ll be taking the rest of the week off. Some guest bloggers will be filling in.

One of these days, I’m going to figure out a way to talk about “global change,” not just climate change. You know, because it’s such a catchy term that rolls off the tongue.

Sarcasm aside, to lots of smart people, “global change” is where the serious action is at. Right now. As Jonathan Foley wrote two years ago in Yale Environment 360:

I worry about this collective fixation on global warming as the mother of all environmental problems. Learning from the research my colleagues and I have done over the past decade, I fear we are neglecting another, equally inconvenient truth: that we now face a global crisis in land use and agriculture that could undermine the health, security, and sustainability of our civilization.

Of course, you can’t just dwell on impending ecological ruin any more than you can dwell on imminent climate doom. It’s a bummer. And like melting ice sheets and rising seas, the planetary ecosystem-wide problems underlying ”global change” are abstract, immense and no competition for The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

That said, last year a useful framework articulating the interconnected challenges was laid out in the abstract of this essay in Science:

Tremendous progress has been made in understanding the functioning of the Earth system and, in particular, the impact of human actions. Although this knowledge can inform management of specific features of our world in transition, societies need knowledge that will allow them to simultaneously reduce global environmental risks while also meeting economic development goals. For example, how can we advance science and technology, change human behavior, and influence political will to enable societies to meet targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to avoid dangerous climate change? At the same time, how can we meet needs for food, water, improved health and human security, and enhanced energy security? Can this be done while also meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger and ensuring ecosystem integrity?

Those are mighty tall tasks, but that’s why there are conferences like the Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability, which is happening this week in Stockholm, Sweden.

Interestingly, I noticed in the description of the conference that the connective thread of the agenda is climate change:

This third Nobel Laureate Symposium, which follows from previous meetings in Potsdam and London, will focus on the need for integrated approaches that deal with the synergies, conflicts and trade-offs between the individual components of climate change.

Climate change, decreasing biodiversity, deteriorating ecosystems, poverty and a continuously growing population all contribute to reducing the planet’s resilience and may have catastrophic implications for humanity.

Each of these problems has attracted great attention from the international community, but they have invariably been considered in isolation, with little or no regard to the interactions between them.

It is time to change this approach.

I agree. But I’m not sure putting humanity on trial is the best starting point.

The conference comes on the heels of this meeting in London, and is organized around three main themes:  the dominant role of humans as a planetary force of change; the societal/ecological relationship; and the potential for large-scale sustainability solutions.

It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of the conference, but what happens afterward, when all the scientists and luminaries retreat to their separate silos, is what matters most.

I am no fan of the mega-monster retailer, but this is a story hard to ignore.

Over at Frontier Earth, some riffing on a classic essay in Science, painted lawns in the desert, and a tiny step towards sustainability in Phoenix, Arizona.

Hi, I’m teofilo.  As Keith mentioned earlier, I will be guest-blogging for him this week.  As he also mentioned, I am currently a graduate student in urban planning (at Rutgers) and have also worked seasonally at Chaco Canyon.  People often see that combination as rather incongruous, but I think it actually makes a lot of sense, and part of what I’ll be doing here this week is trying to show how the two go together.  I’ll especially be focusing on the concept of societal collapse, which is something that gets discussed a lot in both archaeology and planning, at least in certain circles.  Chaco has often been drawn into these discussions as an example of collapse in the archaeological record that can be useful as a cautionary example in dealing with current challenges such as climate change.  That’s reasonable enough, but I think there are some pretty serious problems with the ways some people have tried to bring Chaco into the modern collapse/sustainability conversation.  I’ll be discussing that in more detail in the days to come.

I do have my own blog, Gambler’s House, which focuses on Chaco but also discusses Southwestern archaeology more generally along with a wide variety of related subjects.  Most of the posts I do there are rather different from the sort of thing I’ll be doing here, so I doubt I’ll be doing much cross-posting this week, but if you’re interested in this stuff there’s plenty more to see over there.

Anyway, I’m glad to be here, and I thank Keith for the opportunity to expand my horizons a bit and engage with a different sort of audience than I’m used to.  It should be an interesting week.