What is the Climate Dilemma?

What is the Climate Dilemma?

 I recently asked a class of U.S. college students, for example, how they would define climatic change. After some discussion they reached a typically American consensus that it should be defined as “an opportunity”.

                                                                        -David Orr in Down to the Wire

The quotation above, taken from David Orr’s reflection on the climate dilemma and the processes needed to devise a solution, is more indicative of the dilemma itself than it is a source of optimism in rooted in America’s future. The suggestion that climate change provides possibilities is not entirely false. As Orr suggests throughout the second section of Down to the Wire, issues of climate change have connections to a variety of other social ills. The exploitation of resources, both globally and within the United States, reinforces an unequal social structure in which basic rights to safe living and private property are threatened. The United States’ continued dependence on oil, both foreign and, more recently, “naturally” extracted from the country, places the country at a significant disadvantage in an increasingly “green minded” global economy. The emissions that have expedited climate change, too present significant public health risks to people across the country. As such, solving the climate dilemma is “an opportunity” to create a form a stronger economy, champion human rights, promote the health of the global populace, and generally restructure the world in a manner that will ensure the prosperity of generations to come.

However, the positive externalities of solving the climate dilemma should not serve to define the dilemma itself. Throughout Down to the Wire, Orr waxes idealistic on solutions for the climate dilemma, ranging from a rewriting of the American Constitution to a vividly imagined criminal case pitting all living things other than humans against humanity. The point of such abstractions, and in the case of the proposed United States Constitution rewrite, delusions, is to highlight the fact that the American public and the governments and corporations that serve it have yet to fully grasp the magnitude of the effects climate change have had, and will continue to have on the way we live. In suggesting that climate change is “an opportunity”, the gravity of the effects of climate change are diminished in the eyes of the American public, constituting the true climate dilemma: It is an afterthought for the majority of Americans.

This is not to say, however, that no progress is being made on climate change, or that the American public is completely oblivious to the grim world future generations will face if nothing is done. In a 2010 Huffington Post blog, aptly titled Huff Post Green, an entry comments on a list of the top 25 “Words of the Decade” as recorded by the Language Monitor, an organization that tracks trends in the use of the English language. The terms “Climate Change” and “Sustainability” charted at number 1 and number 22 respectively, usurping terms such as “Bailout” and “9/11” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/19/top-words-of-the-decade-2_n_363554.html). Noted energy businessman T. Boone Pickens can be observed promoting wind power in the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2bOug1d20c.

Mr. Pickens is instructive for less positive reasons as well. Citing a drop in the price of natural oil, Pickens recently canceled a large order of wind turbines to support a wind power generation farm he had been planning (http://www.dallasnews.com/news/state/headlines/20100112-T-Boone-Pickens-cuts-order-915.ece). Outside of displaying a propensity for hypocrisy on the part of Pickens, the incident highlights the power of the American people to force progress out of the corporations that serve it and influence government policy. Pickens’ Plan, what was his push for wind turbine energy and now is his push for using natural gas, is called, changed because natural gas has dubiously been promoted in some quarters as a sustainable alternative to oil and many have accepted the farce. If the climate dilemma is to be solved, the American people will have to be informed enough to note truly sustainable business practices and support them with their wallets.