Abstract
As with nuclear weapons, we need new science, new resolve, and new ethics to deal with climate change.
The Bulletin's iconic Clock captures more than the imminence of catastrophe. It signifies the transformative power of science, a planetary consciousness, and the ironies of moral behavior. All of these messages are of first-order importance in grappling with climate change.
The transformative power of science was demonstrated to the world at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A small part of the energy released in nearby supernovae before our Earth was formed–but a colossal amount in human terms–had been stored close to Earth's surface in heavy nuclei, hidden from all life-forms for more than 3 billion years, until scientists less than a century ago learned how to see these nuclei.
Similarly, for the first time during that same 3-billion-plus years, one species is unlocking the history of Earth and revealing that a randomness at every time scale has modified its own habitats and the habitats of its fellow creatures. The ensuing knowledge contains the message that we human beings could plausibly be presenting a huge headache to those who follow us. Quite possibly, our own actions (especially, the extraction and burning of fossil fuel) are significantly altering our planet's habitability. As a result, our descendants could find themselves spending much of their time and treasure moving cities inland, managing refugee populations, relocating agriculture, and keeping other creatures from going extinct.
Right now, we know mostly that the critical gaps in our understanding cannot be read as reassurance that the damage from our current actions will be small. The scientific community simply must elevate the study of Earth's natural science within the family of sciences. There is an urgent need for more intense and creative measurement and modeling, so that a larger fraction of what we learn about Earth in the next half century comes from our cleverness, and a smaller fraction comes from watching what the passage of time reveals. More quickly than is now expected, we must master the feedback loops that determine how sensitive our climate is to the atmosphere's elevated carbon dioxide levels.
A planetary consciousness has been at the heart of the struggle to create a framework of sense and sensibility for nuclear weapons. The assumption has been that each nation's leaders will act rationally on behalf of their citizenry's survival. Until very recently, no political leader in a country already possessing nuclear weapons thought it wise to make nuclear weapons attractive to the leaders of countries without them. All assumed a commonality of interest in avoiding nuclear war. Nonetheless, crucial international agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty presumed a two-tier world, with haves and have-nots. Many perverse incentives for the have-nots resulted, exacerbated by the haves showing only occasional interest in their treaty obligation of moving toward disarmament.
The crucial 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change also institutionalizes a two-tier world with “common but differentiated responsibilities.” Here, too, many consequences have been perverse. The enormous investments in infrastructure (buildings, roads, power plants, etc.) currently under way in the developing world are exempted from scrutiny. The mechanisms of technology transfer are based on avoiding domestic action in industrialized countries and imposing neocolonial relationships on developing countries. The leading emitter of carbon dioxide, the United States, is walking away from responsibilities it helped frame, arguing that the two-tier structure is misguided.
With a new set of policy instruments required by 2012, there is an opportunity for a restructuring of assignments, moving toward a single world system with more dispersed initiative and greatly accelerated investment in carbon-responsive technology. The world's nations, all of them currently investing recklessly in inefficient infrastructure, may be able to coordinate and integrate the learning-by-doing that accompanies experimenting with new solutions. Much faster penetration of the new technology should result. The scientific community's deep tradition of conducting its business oblivious to nationality may serve to facilitate this transition from a two-tier to a one-tier world.
The ironies of moral behavior are becoming clear in the domain of weaponry as the world confronts the limitations of nuclear deterrence. Deterrence is robust only if those with the power to destroy are rational and are believed to be rational. Irrationality trumps deterrence. So does martyrdom. Where will we find guidance in the face of these novel threats?
Here the similarity with climate change is more in the novelty of the problems ahead than in the problems themselves. With deeper knowledge of Earth and of our impacts on it, we gain the ability to geoengineer the planet to make it more comfortable for ourselves, and we develop an interest in doing so. Scientists are thrusting options forward that promise to counter global warming with reflecting particles in the stratosphere and mirrors in space. The allure of these solutions is great, to the extent that they truly present alternatives to belt-tightening and to large changes in the relative prices of what we buy. Where will we find guidance regarding geoengineering? How will such systems be governed? What weight must we give to the preservation of other species?
Looking ahead, we need new science, new politics, and new ethics, and we need them urgently.