I think there are a number of step-wise scenarios: what have we warmed by — a degree, two degrees, three, on and on. I think the maximum that people are projecting would top out at something like six degrees. In the more near-term future, the next 10 years, [the prediction is] by two degrees. The consequences, although they are in some sense unpredictable because the climate models have enormous static in them, the one thing we know for sure is that sea level will rise with every degree warmer that we get in part because glaciers and polar ices will melt and Greenland’s ice will melt to some degree. A foot-and-a-half rise in sea level will pose considerable challenges to island nations, particularly small island nations. It will pose considerable challenges to low-lying areas such as Bangladesh and smaller portions of India in the Ganges delta, which is much like New Orleans. Those areas will become uninhabitable. Right now in Bangladesh, we’re talking about millions of people who would be displaced. If they were vast empty continents, that would be one thing, but unfortunately, that is not a particularly empty part of the world. There are going to be dislocations and an almost unprecedented movement of large numbers of people.
If you look at the developed world, if you had a satellite view and you track for where population is most dense, what you get is a bright red ribbon all along the coasts of U.S. and Europe. We hive to water, in part because that was early transportation, in part because of scenery, in part because of resources, so low-lying areas are going to be stressed. Man the pumps or move inland, both of which are expensive and pose some daunting engineering challenges. That’s the major thing that large numbers of people will notice, will feel. There are also models that show that some areas that are currently fairly wet could become dry. Areas that are now dry that will become drier. In California, droughts are going to get longer. Climatologists in Australia no longer use the word drought because drought assumes that it will end. They’re just talking about a permanent change in climate.
There will be climate differences. We know that already migratory patterns of birds are changing. They’re arriving earlier or they’re going further north to breed because of the climate. Plants are blooming earlier by measurable days. That doesn’t necessarily have dramatic implications for human beings because we have houses that we can warm and cool, though those come at the price of more carbon, but throwing off migratory timing means for some plants that depend upon birds or insects for pollination that the sequences might be thrown off. The pollinators arrive after the flowers have bloomed, or before the flowers have bloomed. It’s a complicated orchestrated dance that has been selected over many thousands of years. It will continue happening even if we stop carbon today because there’s so much in the atmosphere and in the oceans.
How is the Obama Administration going to deal with all of these daunting challenges?
So far, they’ve only said encouraging words. [Obama] hasn’t been in office long enough to affect policy but the intentions to affect policy have clearly been articulated. In his [address to Congress] speech last week, President Obama used the words “carbon cap.” The follow-up to the Kyoto Accords will be in Copenhagen later this year and that [U.S.] negotiator has made it clear that she intends to see to it that the U.S. take a leadership role in whatever treaties come out of that conference. That’s a 180-degree change from the Bush Administration.
If you were an advisor to Obama, what would you advise that he do?
The cap-and-trade is a first step and it also has the nice feature of raising some revenue for a cash-strapped government, even though it may mean that in the short term, we pay some more to keep our lights on and charge our laptop computers. There are all sorts of details that have to be worked out smoothly, but I think that will work out. The other thing that is in his stimulus proposal and his announced budget, compared to the last eight years and probably compared to the last 30 years, [is that] he’s proposing to invest a substantial sum of money in solar and wind and geothermal technologies. Part of that investment is going to be [research and development] for storage and transmission. Estimates that I have heard from a former student who is now a professor of engineering, if there were no site objections and you could put the windmills wherever they are optimal, and he’s not saying you can do that, it’s conceivable that we could get 50 percent of our current energy from that.
The other thing that is in the budget and in the stimulus package is tax incentives to weatherize houses, to reduce air conditioning costs in the summer and heating costs in the winter. So there are a variety of incentives to push conservation and thus reduce energy demands as well as pushing to directly cap carbon emissions, which, if it works like the cap-and-trade on sulfur, it could have a very rapid impetus to the technology to capture carbon. What we do with it once we capture it is still a complicated technological and ecological issue. Certainly, [Obama has] announced his administration’s intention to push hard on every front that we know of that will reduce the loading of carbon in the atmosphere. No magic wand. No sudden cessation, but a policy that puts us on the right track.
What can the average Amherst College student do to help?
I think we all have to become substantially more energy conscious. That goes way beyond turning the lights off, changing the light bulbs and what we do with our passive chargers. I think it’s going to reach down to how many outfits we need, how many pairs of shoes. I’m not suggesting that we have to go primitive or anything of that sort, but … our sense of self is intimately tied up in consumer spending, and it has to be altered. Some control has to be exercised. Those are lifestyle changes that are easy to talk about, but they’re harder to seriously enact. Retail therapy is a cultural byword, and I think we’re going to have to get over it. Just in terms of reducing the amount of energy that we expend in order to live a meaningful and satisfying life. More energy efficiency in the home is probably the most important single thing that an individual can do.
Is there anything you want to add?
I think that it’s been said by a number of people, Obama himself and certainly by Al Gore, that climate change, global warming, call it what you will, is an unprecedented challenge. It is genuinely a worldwide problem. There isn’t any way that any nation can seal itself off from the effects. If there’s a disease, you can quarantine, you can patrol your borders for immigration, you can think of all sorts of international problems that are regional or can be localized, or at least some portion of the world can be made immune or aloof from the threat, [but] this is the mother of all challenges. It hardly needs saying that our track record in getting worldwide agreement is not good.