One hot day

So the Concert for the Earth took place. Came off great, by all accounts. Lots of rockin', lots of people watching, in an effort to increase awareness of the issue of, the looming danger of, global warming. MoveOn even organized a whole bunch of local parties around the event, punctuated by a so-called "virtual town hall" where group members got to ask, on camera, questions about global warming to Democratic presidential candidates. The group's description of the parties predicted how everyone would leave energized and encouraged.

I was at one. I left distressed and frustrated.

Not by the concert, no, not by the fact that it was a lot of hoopla and hype, no: It was, after all, a big PR stunt, an attention-grabber, so all the post-concert commentary from "serious" observers wondering how many of the attendees would carry the message beyond that day and sniping at the performers for their lack of expertise in the central topic didn't really bother me. It's never true that most people leave such an event turned into advocates for the cause, whatever it may be. Some will but most won't; that's just the way it goes. This was not the effort to get the word out and get people moving, it was an effort. A big one, admittedly, but still one.

Nor was it the vapid, uninspiring, say-the-right-things answers the candidates offered to MoveOn's not-very-probing questions that got me down. That was entirely predictable, especially given MoveOn's role as essentially a lobbying arm of the Democratic Party. The idea that any Democrat would be seriously challenged never occurred to me.

What's more, I was only slightly perturbed by the equally predictable "oh, look at all the CO₂ they're producing doing this, the hypocrites," carping, since I knew that the organizers at least had thought about that aspect and at least had made the attempt to minimize the event's environmental impact. (And a few of the performers said the event had gotten them thinking about their own touring-generated carbon footprints and about how to reduce them.)

So no, it wasn't any of that. It was, rather, comments at the party I was at. Comments by people supposedly already aware of, already concerned about, the dangers of looming climate change. Comments that asserted how "easy" it would be to best global warming.

We're doomed.

Because dealing with global warming is very decidedly not going to be easy. It is not just a matter of "everybody" using energy-saving fluorescent bulbs instead of incandescent ones. It is not just a matter of "buying local" and driving a hybrid car.

Yes, by all means use energy-saving bulbs. They are better and yes, while they are more expensive and it's nice to know that you can afford bulbs that cost nearly 10 times what standard ones do, they will actually save you money in the long term. Yes, by all means buy local to reduce transportation-generated greenhouse gases and it's nice to know that, unlike many, you can afford the significantly higher price involved in buying fresh local produce. Yes, if you're buying a new car by all means buy a hybrid and it's nice to know that, unlike many, you can afford a brand new car.

By all means do all that. But don't imagine for one second that you're solving global warming or even that you're "doing your share" and even less that "if only everyone" did the same as you that things would be fine because first dammit, there are a hell of a lot of us who can't afford fresh local produce and a new car and second dammit, even if we could it still wouldn't be fine.

(And let's not forget that alternatives are not without their own environmental issues.)

The painful fact is, as the IPCC forcefully pointed out in its April report, the effects of global warming are not only real, they are already visible. And even that report, described by one source as "near-apocalyptic," may have been, in the words of another, "absurdly optimistic," as a new study lead by James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute suggests the IPCC failed to pay enough attention to the potential for positive feedback loops in climate change, where each change becomes a new forcing, increasing the pressure for further, faster change. As Jonathan at Past Peak noted last week,

[w]hen major warming has occurred in the past, it has happened quite suddenly - on a scale of centuries or even decades, rather than millenia - because of the accelerating effects of positive feedback loops.

Prevention is no longer an option. We are past the point of avoiding damaging effects of global warming. We are now talking about mitigation. And that's not going to be dealt with by a few feel-good choices only truly available to a relatively few people. Yes, I say again, if you can make those choices, make them, and yes, they will help - but don't think they are an answer or at best more than a stopgap.

Because dealing with global warming, again, is not going to be easy. Reducing our individual and our total social carbon footprint will be difficult. It will be inconvenient. It will be irritating. It will take actual sacrifices. And it will have real impact on our lives - the only question is how much of that impact will be the willing one we take on and how much the unwilling one imposed by the changing climate.

What does that mean, bottom line? It means the idea that we can deal with global warming without a clear impact on our national standard of living is an utter fantasy. A dangerous, destructive fantasy.

We are, quite simply, going to have to learn to do with less. To have less, to want less. It is simply impossible for us to have a hope of any meaningful mitigation of the pain and suffering that global warming will otherwise inflict on the world so long as we cling to a culture and an economy based on the central concept of "More." There is no technological quick fix. There is no chance without a genuine change in the way we live our lives, without a genuine cost. And damn it all, we should be more than ready to pay that cost. The alternative is just too dire.

(It is not, by the way, a cost to be shared equally: Those among us whose "standard of living" would better be described as a standard of surviving can't be expected to take on additional burdens and need to be shielded from those that will arise.)

Paying that cost, I say one yet more time, will not be easy. It will not be convenient. What we have to do to mitigate global warming will not work to our selfish benefit. It will require some moderation in our national standard of living. It will require a change in our economic lives, in how we value things, and will as a necessary consequence result in wider distribution of wealth as those better to bear the costs bear more of them. But I say that’s not a result to be feared but to be welcomed. A cleaner environment, a more stable climate, mitigation of global warming's effects, and a broader distribution of wealth are not threats but benefits. If doing without a few high-tech goodies and accepting, perhaps, a 1990 standard of living instead of a 2010 standard of living can promote both environmental and economic security, I say it’s a damn small price to pay.

But small as that price is, it still means giving up on "more" and accepting "less." And I really, truly wonder if even as we talk tough and make our "commitments" and pass our new laws, we'll be willing to pay that price before it is much too late.