Climate change concepts and impacts

Climate Change

The question at hand is whether governments will act to curb rising temperatures. I do not believe that they will. There are many reasons for this. Curbing rising temperatures requires a number of strong actions, because those rising temperatures are created by greenhouse gas emissions -- burning fossil fuels in particular, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.

The problem is that the actions to curb rising temperatures would be incredibly disruptive to just about every aspect of our daily lives, and the action needed would have to be immediate and global in nature. These are the primary problems. The CQ article points about that President Obama has called for reduction in greenhouse gases from power plants, and levying additional taxes on carbon-based fuels. If the President was capable to doing such things without Congress, it does not matter, because these moves are not nearly enough. In principle, if something like a tax -- or the cap and trade system -- was large enough, people would be motivated to change their behaviors.

The problem is that our behaviors are so ingrained that incremental changes are not going to be sufficient. We would need to localize production again, instead of shipping goods all over the world using trucks. As consumers, we would need to reduce or eliminate consumption of many goods. We would need to stop living in suburbs and starting living close to where we work so that we could walk or drive. We should also need to stop flying in airplanes. And this is not just something that Americans can do -- governments all around the world need to put these measures into place. Now consider if it is possible to shut down the airlines, and what the effects of that might be. Is it possible to tear down the suburbs and start from scratch with our urban planning? How long would that take? Stopping climate change is not simply a matter of putting a few restrictions on power plant emissions, it is a matter of completely overhauling our way of life, since modern life has been built almost entirely around the consumption on fossil fuels.

This is not to say that these adjustments will never happen. They will, but only because fossil fuels will run out, or become so scarce that alternate energy sources will be cheaper and easier. We already have electric cars, and more progressive places have high rates of people who walk or bicycle to work. But the changes would need to happen more quickly and severely than seems possible right now. Which brings us to the political issue.