The Global Warming Choice: Now or Later?

There's been a lot of talk about the long-term effects of anthropogenic global warming. What will the global mean temperature be in 50 years? How high will sea level rise by 2100? Thinking about the long-term effects is necessary, but it's also a problem because we humans, we speculating apes, have a standard response to long-term threats.

We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

When it comes to global warming, the stakes are too high for us to stick with that old approach. Even the moderate predictions presented in the latest IPCC reports, which generally ignore the worst potential outcomes of global warming in an attempt to avoid seeming alarmist, suggest that we'll face massive and expensive disruptions within the lifetimes of many people walking the planet today. The worst-case scenarios, which you probably haven't heard about, could be devastating. Like game-over devastating.

The good news is that the solutions don't have to be drastic if we don't put them off too long. If you're even a little bit financially savvy, you know how this works.

Saving for the Future
Think about saving for retirement. If you save a little bit over a long period of time, you can easily build a substantial retirement fund. If you wait until you're 60 years old to start saving, you've got a problem. You're going to have to come up with a lot more money a lot faster than you ever did before if you're going to catch up to the smart person who started saving in their 20s.

Dealing with global warming follows the same pattern. The sooner we start fixing the problem, the easier the solutions will be. The longer we wait, the more we'll have to scramble and the more it will cost.

Global Warming: a Review
Let's look at the basic problem again. We've built our modern technological civilization mostly on power generated by burning fossil fuels. The benefits are numerous and obvious. Easy global travel, plentiful street lights, refreshing air conditioning, and the awesome Chevy Corvette.

The unintended consequence of this reliance on fossil fuels is that we've changed the composition of the atmosphere. We've dug ancient carbon out of the ground and released it into the atmosphere. All that additional carbon that's released when we burn coal, oil, or natural gas has overwhelmed the ability of the natural carbon cycle to cope. Some of our carbon dioxide emissions are absorbed naturally, but the ones that don't get absorbed remain in the atmosphere.

Carbon dioxide is a minor component of our atmosphere, but that minor component has significant effects. For one thing, it keeps the Earth at a temperature warm enough to sustain human life. You can go to the beach in shorts this summer only because the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide keeps the planet in a comfortable temperature range. That trace amount of carbon dioxide also keeps every piece of vegetation on the planet alive. Trace components can have major effects, and so can changing their ratio in a system like the atmosphere.

All that additional carbon dioxide increases the existing greenhouse effect. That means more heat is being trapped near Earth's surface and in our oceans. Since heat drives weather, more heat changes existing weather patterns, and if that happens long enough, we've entered a new climate state.

The unintended consequence of powering our civilization with fossil fuels is that we've changed the climate equation. That's the bad news.

The Good News
The good news is that the solution is simple and, if we don't wait too long, relatively painless. Conserve, convert, and capture.

Conserving energy helps fight global warming, because if we stop producing more energy than we need, we add less carbon dioxide to our atmosphere. Converting is tha main part of the solution. We have the technology to upgrade our power supplies, to move beyond the days when we burned rocks to run our computers. This process is already going on. While some people still claim that clean energy is unproven technology, there's a clean energy boom going on all across the planet. Even Texas has joined that party by tapping some of the wind energy available in this state.
Capturing and sequestering some of the excess carbon dioxide is still being researched, but it's a necessary step. We've already waited too long on conservation and conversion for those approaches to solve the problem alone, so we need to find a way to help return the atmosphere to its natural composition.

The Important Point
Here's the important point. Although some of the worst effects of global warming lie in the future, they will be affected, for better or worse, by our actions today. Conserving energy is something everyone can do. Besides helping cut America's carbon dioxide emissions, conserving energy can save money. You don't leave your car running in the driveway overnight. That would be wasting gasoline and money. If you leave on unneeded lights or appliances, you're likewise wasting fuel and money.

Personal conservation is a start, but we really need this necessary upgrade of our power supplies to be a national project. We all know the horror stories about the waste and abuse of overly large government, but we should also recognize that global warming is exactly the kind of problem we invented government to deal with, problems that require collective knowledge and collective action. We face the choice of minor government action today or major government in the future when things have gotten worse.

In addition to personally conserving energy, you can help fight global warming another way. Pressure your politicians to recognize the problem. We have a major election coming up next year, so this is a good time to let the candidates know that you care about the long-term security and safety of America. Let them know that you prefer the cheaper alternative of dealing with the problem now rather than the expensive alternative of dealing with it later.

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