Human nature against Mother Nature

Moisés Naím / World Energy & Oil

Lately, Mother Nature seems to be trying to get our attention. Its signals are increasingly loud, strident and hard to miss. Some have been lethal. 2015 is poised to become the hottest year on record. Last October, Hurricane Patricia, the strongest ever recorded by meteorologists, produced record winds that reached 200 miles per hour. Average temperatures in the Artic have been increasing twice as fast as temperatures in the rest of the planet. This contributes to the thawing of the icecovered polar surface. Every 10 years, this ice cover shrinks by 9%. Scientists expect that polar thawing will raise sea levels to such a point that the populations of many highly urbanized coastal areas will be forced to move to higher ground.

According to the U.N., the number of current storms, floods and heat waves is five times greater than it was in 1970. Although this increase must be partially attributed to the fact that we now have better data than half a century ago, all studies point to a heightened frequency of extreme weather phenomena: abnormally high or low temperatures, torrential rains, mud slides, prolonged droughts and fiercer forest fires. The number of displaced persons due to climate change is now greater than ever before and higher than the number of persons displaced due to armed conflict.

Why has progress been so difficult?
After decades of intense debates, an overwhelming majority of scientists agree that these changes in the earth’s climate are caused by the increase in the emissions of certain gases (especially carbon dioxide or CO2) produced by human activities. There is still some residual skepticism. Some of it results from honest and healthy disagreements among experts, but unfortunately there are also plenty of biased “scientific studies” financed by corporations and other parties that benefit from the current patterns of energy production and consumption and fight any reforms bound to affect their interests. Despite the increasingly clear signals that the earth’s climate is changing, humanity has hitherto been unable to effectively alter its current disastrous path towards a warmer planet. This lack of effective action is is due not just to to the manipulation of corporations and countries that push their worn fossil fuel oriented agendas at the expense of the common good. It is also due to human nature.

Humans have a hard time changing habits and routines. Research on weightloss diets shows that the great majority of those who start dieting abandon the effort before accomplishing their goals. Or gain back the weight they lost as slowly but surely they return to the old eating habits. Tobacco smokers know how difficult it is to break the nicotine addiction. We also know that a health scare is the surest way to change behavior and drop unhealthy life styles. Surviving a heart attack, for example, does wonders to make people stop smoking, eat more healthy foods and exercise more often.

Before permanent damage occurs
Is it possible, therefore, to assume that we will need a largescale climate accident in order to change the ways we treat our planet? So far, it looks that way. Despite the growing stridency of climate events and the wealth of scientific data backing the worrisome trends, the messaging from Mother Nature has not yet been sufficient to induce the changes in human activity needed to curb CO2 emissions. Therefore, unless pathbreaking decisions are taken soon, it is not unreasonable to assume that the world is likely to suffer an unprecedented and painful weatherrelated event that may finally induce humanity to go on the lowcarbon diet we have been avoiding.

The carbon addiction rampant in today’s world may well be more difficult to break than an individual’s addiction to tobacco, sugar or alcohol. The way we light, heat and cool our homes and offices, our means of transportation, the way our cities are built or the products we consume— from plastics to hamburgers—require a high consumption of carbon that, once fed into the atmosphere as CO2, contributes to global warming and climate chaos. And this will need to change.

The first and most obvious reason why shedding the world’s carbon addiction has proven so difficult is that this has to be a collective and multinational effort sustained in perpetuity. If sticking to a diet is difficult for a person, it is far more so for countries, especially if they are expected to act in concert with others who are also supposed to follow the diet. Some countries will cheat. Others will demand that the diet of the rich and fat be more stringent than that of the poor and slim. Others will ask that the more onerous low-carbon diet be forced on the countries that have been polluting the planet and its atmosphere since the industrial revolutions and allow developing nations like China and India, to go on a much lighter diet given that they began industrializing (and polluting) much later.

International responsibility to protect the planet
The United Nations’ first climate change conference took place in Brazil in 1992 and the next one, COP21, will be held in Paris this December, Since the first gathering many others have taken place, but little progress has been made. The hope is that COP21 will conclude with more tangible and effective progress than previous such gatherings, in curbing more CO2 emissions than ever before. This, of course, is welcome news. But celebrating the potentially positive achievements of the Paris meeting also shows how complacent and even minimalist our ambitions have become. It turns out that success has been defined down and that the agreements that will hopefully be reached in Paris, while welcome, will not reach the goal of stopping average global warming from rising 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Thus, human inertia will keep challenging Mother Nature without apparent concern for the fact that nature always wins.

In the past, humanity has always been able to avoid and adapt to situations where Mother Nature threatened human life. This was greatly helped by the human capacity to imagine the future and act to avoid the most negative consequences. But curbing global warming is the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced, and so far it has shown little adaptability or foresight. To be fair, however, some progress is being made.

According to the REN21 report produced by a group of 154 countries, by the end of 2014 the percentage of global consumption of clean, renewable energy such as solar, wind or biofuels had already reached 20% of the total and the prevailing trend is to accelerate the reliance on renewables. More dramatically, atomic fusion, after a long period of research and false starts, seems to be on the verge of major breakthroughs that would enable commercial plants to be available by 2050, providing practically inexhaustible sources of clean energy. Steven Prager, head of the Princeton Plasma Physics laboratory, calls this development “inevitable,” while scientists at the Marx Planck Institute seem similarly bullish about this possibility.

Bill Gates’ forward-looking suggestions
If fear is a powerful motivating human factor, another strong one is provided by material incentives. More governments and even private institutions and individuals are now providing strong financial incentives for humans to develop cleaner sources of energy in the quickest possible manner. In a recent a interview, Bill Gates spoke with a sense of urgency about the two essential components required to accelerate this drive.

One is the carbon tax, which he calls the “pull” that would create lucrative incentives to develop clean alternatives to fossil fuels. The other is research and development, which he calls the “push” that could generate a quicker, more permanent solution to global warming. However, as already existing global warming is essentially irreversible, adaptation measures will have to be taken, at costs of some $70 billion per year before a solution is finally found. Without a substantial carbon tax in place, Gates says, there is not enough of an incentive for innovators to invest in alternative, cleaner energy sources. And the recent drop in oil prices is also an inhibiting factor in the development of the more expensive to produce sources of cleaner energy.

Bill Gates is calling for what feels like an almost miraculous effort to solve the problem of global warming. But launching this effort is not as impossible as creating a miracle. This almost–miracle will come about not by means of a victory of human nature over Mother Nature, but as a result of our collective realization that the survival of our species depends on how effectively we can heed nature’s warnings.

Also found in The Atlantic