Our Inability to Confront Global Warming

The following quote from an economist at the World Wildlife Federation, which has an excellent climate change team, crystallizes the difference between how the U.S. and China approach global warming and climate change:

“When you speak to the Chinese, climate change is not an ideological issue. It’s just a fact of life. While we debate climate change and the transition to a low carbon economy, the debate is past in China. For them it’s implementation. It’s a growth sector, and they want to capture this sector.”

What this means for the U.S, beyond our ability to capture a significant growth industry, is that global warming has indeed become an ideological issue.  Recent polls have found significant correlations between belief (or disbelief) in global warming and support or opposition for hot-button culture issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.  Think about that for a moment.  Global warming is falling into a basket of issues ruled by emotions,  thousands of years of cultural and religious debate, and human conceptions of right and wrong.  Global warming is a scientific phenomenon.  It is either real or it isn't.  Global warming does not belong in the same discussions as these other topics.

What does this tell us about the United States?  For me, this inability to reach a national consensus about global warming is a serious red flag for our society.  The most successful societies are those that can adapt to changing circumstances.  They must be nimble, open to the truth, and willing to face unpleasant realities.  Most of the world is doing that right now, but the U.S. is not.  I believe it is still an open question as to why, but I have a few thoughts.

First, we have a political system specifically designed to maintain the status quo.  Despite the great changes throughout our history, we have more often faced gridlock.  This was intentional.  One of the chief concerns of our founding fathers was to avoid tyranny and monarchy at all costs, and so they designed a system that not only shared power, but also is prone to slow, methodical deliberation.  China, or its ruling council, can essentially do what it wants, without a national dialogue that often takes decades.  Such a design can have horrific consequences, such as the tens of millions of deaths that occurred during the Great Leap Forward.  It can also allow massive societies to respond with swiftness to imminent threats such as global warming.

Second, this is a huge, massive, gargantuan problem, with an equally massive, complex, and long-term solution required.  For many people, who have bills to pay, children to support, etc, facing its consequences and considering solutions is not an easy task.  And this is important because public opinion is important in our political system.  For such large undertakings, a politician must have public support.  Further, this is a long-term problem, and many people are less interested in fixing problems that will primarily exist in the future, as opposed to tomorrow or next week.  Humans have a short-term approach to dealing with problems and with survival.

Third, the U.S. is a massive user of domestically available fossil fuels.  Even though we import oil, we get most of our natural gas and coal domestically, and much of our oil imports come from Canada.  Despite all of the talk to the contrary, we do not face the same level of energy security issues as other countries (Europe, for example).  These domestic resources also creates jobs and entire industries, and the prospect of having to transition away from such jobs (which will be painful), is daunting, and creates entirely understandable opposition groups that are quite interested in questioning the scientific certainty of global warming.

Many more reasons exist for the surprising amount of skepticism about global warming in the U.S, but I think perhaps the most disheartening is this:  The vested corporate interests that stand to lose from a transition from fossil fuels, and the misinformation they promote, trying with all their might to make global warming a partisan issue.  There is no doubt that making global warming a part of "culture wars" has been a direct goal.  Look at those issues historically; they never resolve.  Meanwhile the rest of the world, especially China, will have shifted away from fossil fuels and captured emerging technology markets.

Eventually though, the debate surrounding global warming in the U.S. will resolve. What we will be able to do about it when that time comes is another question entirely.