In the months preceding the December 1997 Kyoto Climate Conference,
a remarkable shift occurred in the media focus on the greenhouse warming
problem. A flurry of articles appeared in the major media that were specifically
designed to inform the public about the science underlying greenhouse warming.
Suddenly, the science had become newsworthy, and the obligation to educate
the public had assumed a much higher priority.
What drove this major shift in media attention toward this long-standing
issue? The obvious answer was the Kyoto Conference. This assemblage of
representatives of essentially all the nations of the world was charged
with beginning the virtually unthinkable- changing the way the world uses
fossil fuels to produce its massive energy demands. Suddenly, people all
over the planet were involved, and greenhouse warming was no longer a bit
player. Quite literally, the Kyoto process itself was threatening to change
everyone's personal world, in possibly large, threatening, and unpredictable
ways.
The implications of the Kyoto process led to a flurry of major advertisements
and infomercials designed to buttress and/ or defend particular points
of view. Environmentally oriented persons and groups emphasized the threats
that elevated levels of greenhouse gases might cause for life on earth,
human and otherwise. Fossil fuel producers and users emphasized potential
damage to the economy and to the specific industries that produce and directly
use fossil fuels. Both positions were expressing valid concerns.
Fascinatingly, the media jumped back into the greenhouse warming problem
at a level that substantially exceeded the level at which they had pursued
the original controversies. The media now realized that there are thousands
of stories in the upgraded greenhouse story, phase two.
One can understand this dramatic shift in media attention by performing
a simple thought experiment. Imagine, by some miracle of scientific wizardry,
that the science of greenhouse warming is now definitively complete, that
climate scientists can state with amazing precision the ways climate would
change under any variety of scenarios of future atmospheric concentrations
of greenhouse gases and radiatively active airborne particulates. Would
the greenhouse warming controversies go away? Hardly. Indeed, I argue that
greenhouse controversies will actually escalate substantially, for a host
of readily understandable reasons. Some of the reasons are outlined below.
To illustrate the first reason, assume that the "definitive"
state of climate science is being used to evaluate the standard IPCC "toy"
scenario of ramping up to a doubling of CO2
over preindustrial levels and holding it there indefinitely. Also assume
that the midrange global-mean estimate for this problem ( ~3°C for
doubled CO2 ) is actually the correct answer.
What kinds of specific climate changes might we expect to see? According
to Manabe & Stouffer (19)
and IPCC (12), we would expect (a)
land to warm more than oceans, (b) a substantial retreat of northern hemisphere
sea ice, (c) sea level to rise more than a meter over the next several
hundred years, (d) a sharp reduction in the overturning circulation of
the North Atlantic ocean, and (e) substantial reductions in midcontinental
summer soil moisture (~25%). Also, we would expect increases in the intensity
of tropical hurricanes/ typhoons, at least for those that tend to reach
mature stages (20). Sharp increases
in summertime heat index (a measure of the effective temperature level
a body feels on a humid day) would be likely in moist subtropical areas
(21). The above list of changes,
if realized, would place significant stresses on many aspects of life on
earth. It is likely there would be many losers and some winners. The values
and equity clashes resulting from this kind of a human-caused climate change
scene are likely to be intense and long lasting.
For the second reason to expect amplified controversy, note that there
remains an important possibility that the actual climate sensitivity could
be near the lower limit of the generous ranges of the current best estimates
( ~1.5°C for doubled CO2 ). Even this
lower level of climate sensitivity to added CO2
can become problematic, however. As pointed out in the 1994 IPCC Report
on Radiative Forcing of Climate Change (18),
our current fossil fuel- use social trajectory is pointing well toward
a quadrupling of CO2 levels over their
preindustrial values. At those high CO2
levels, even this lower level of warming response to CO2
increases, and its potential impacts become surprisingly "unsmall"
(see the doubled CO2 effects for the midrange
estimate above).
A third reason is that, near the current upper limits of climate sensitivity
for the current societal CO2 trajectory,
the large projected climate changes indicate that the potential impacts
would likely become dauntingly large (19).
The above hypothetical cases point out that there almost inevitably will
be a growing global requirement to move toward a change in the world's
use of fossil fuels. That, of course, is what the Kyoto Conference was
all about- to begin the process of nudging the world away from its current
fossil fuel usage profile in the interest of preventing substantial climate
change.
The Kyoto process was widely criticized for doing too much, for doing too
little, or for being too lenient on the CO2
emissions being produced by the other guy (country, industry, generation...).
Obviously, this "Who pays and how much and when?" debate is already
the source of major controversy that is guaranteed to escalate as these
"agreements" evolve toward real commitments by real countries,
real industries, and real individuals. Now the real controversies begin.
Nowvalues clashes become substantive, and ubiquitous. Most of us want to
ensure that our particular set of wants and needs are not disproportionally
impacted. Equity-driven values debates will inevitably be contentious and
emotional. We thus are left with the conclusion that Kyoto's real purpose
was to initiate the effort to nudge us down from our current social trajectory
that is pointing toward quadrupled CO2
levels (18). The really hard
decisions will have to be made in a future series of "Kyoto"
conferences.
Beyond the Kyoto process, the controversies are almost guaranteed to escalate
further. Underlying the Kyoto approach is what appears to me to be an implicit
assumption: We can proceed reasonably on the policy side if we can all
quietly assume, for now at least, that an eventual doubling of CO2
levels would lead to an acceptable level of climate change, but that higher
CO2 levels would become progressively problematic.
From the current scientific information base, what major entities have
concluded that? Certainly not the IPCC 1995 assessment (12).
The uncomfortable answer is that no major bodies have reached such a conclusion.
So what is going on? I suspect that this implicit assumption is actually
driven by the widely, but not unanimously, perceived enormous difficulty
in capping the eventual CO2 at a doubling,
let alone at lower levels. The Kyoto process seems to have quietly and
wisely concluded that it needed to begin from some point that allows incremental
actions to begin, even if they are small steps relative to the real problem.
Thus, the REAL greenhouse warming controversy is almost guaranteed to escalate
further. In order for the Kyoto process to have had any rational hope of
success, the other half of this effort had to be left off the table. Other
half? Well, yes. The Kyoto debates were about who pays for the initial
costs of reducing CO2 emissions. The part
left undiscussed was the debate about who "pays" for the impacts
caused by the unmitigated CO2 emissions.
The tacit agreement to allow significant climate change (CO2
doubling or more) was "left home" in the Kyoto process. This
highlights another fundamental values debate that will surely add daunting
levels of complexity and emotion to the process. The equity issues are
multidimensional: climate change winners versus losers; rich versus poor;
environment versus economy; our generations versus future generations...
In short, the values, equity, and impacts debates on the cost of realized
climate change will inevitably be addressed in a substantially more focused
way than is currently underway. The stakes and the emotional levels of
the arguments will be very high. There will likely be clear winners and
clear losers. It will take a long time, decades to a century, to sort all
this out. This is because the costs of sufficiently aggressive mitigative
action are likely to be very high, clearly so if net global CO2
emissions are to be sharply reduced. However, the "costs" of
doing too little to prevent significant climate warming are also likely
to be very high and would be levied for many centuries.
Simply put, this problem has no soft landing spot. This is the REAL greenhouse
warming controversy. Think of it as our "present" to our great
grandchildren.