ANALYSIS:

Kyoto Treaty Offers Little Hope for Improving Global Warming

The only likely way to start to reverse the imbalanced carbon cycle is when fossil fuels run out. Oil and gas will go first, but coal may be around for several hundred years. I actually do not believe we will go back to a new coal age, however. I think we may gasify some coal, but my better guess is that we will go nuclear. If you look at the Energy Department budget, subsidies for nuclear are a very close second to oil and gas. Of course, it is true that much of it goes towards nuclear weapons research and security, but the nuclear energy sector is preparing for a new boom.

Renewables are unlikely to substitute for fossil energies unless the world economy declines precipitously. Sure, if we all became vegans, lived in small simple homes (less than 1000 sq. ft.), used bicycles instead of cars, and grew most of our food locally, we could exist on renewable energy almost exclusively, but this downsizing of lifestyles itself would bring about global depression, at least in the short run.

We will probably be able to adjust to global warming because it will come gradually. However, there will be vast relocations of populations and disease, and catastrophic storms will cause the deaths of many people. The overriding problem is population growth. The world is not sustainable at a population of 6 billion. Global cooperation on negative population growth, with a goal of having a 2-3 billion population within a hundred years, would be a type of enlightened policy we are unlikely to see in a world bent on the accumulation of artificial man-made capital.

In the short run, we have a lot of very urgent environmental problems which need more attention than global warming, but will have some effect on mitigating the consequences of climate change and, perhaps, slowing its rate. We are running out of potable water as aquifers are being pumped dry all over the world. We are losing soils from erosion at alarming rates. We are over fishing the oceans. We are poisoning the air, water and soil and we are destroying ecosystems and eliminating species. Deforestation has all sorts of bad consequences among which are the release of carbons into the atmosphere. This short list is far from exhaustive.

It is likely that global warming over the past 8000 years has actually averted a new ice age. The bad news is that there will be an ice age, and it will have consequences at least as bad as the worst models of global warming. Every 22,000 years the earth’s rotation shifts so that the poles are reversed--the North Pole leaning closer to the sun and the South leaning away until they reverse once again in another 22 millennia.

We know enough to live sustainably. We should not live near the oceans or too close to rivers; and suburban sprawl is wrong. We need trees. Most products are manufactured carelessly so they cannot be recycled or reused. We eat too much meat. Producing meat, especially considering our factory farms and the cattle industry, is extremely hard on the environment and uses a disproportionate amount of natural resources per pound of protein.

We can learn from nature how to live. No-till organic farming can be just as productive as monoculture, and far more secure and restorative to the land. If we had this kind of farming we would have a clean bay. The point is that there may be far more environmentally destructive activities happening that can be dealt with immediately. Focusing too much on global warming may divert attention away from more urgent problems.

Somehow, we need to find a way to have people value the small and the local, and the value of small families. The challenge of population control is more severe in the developing nations, and many of the policies of the developed nations militate against effective strategies. There is more scientific opinion favoring population reduction than there is favoring growth, but this message is not being translated effectively for the masses, who are being told by their political leadership that families are an exclusively private decisions. Maybe in some other world--but not the one we have.