Climate Change Political Paralysis

• Author: Craig M. Pease
• Position: Ph.D., a research scientist, teaches at the Vermont Law School Environmental Law Center
• Pages: 18-18

Page 18 ❧ THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Copyright © 2010, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, Nov./Dec. 2010

By Craig M. Pease

Climate Change

Political Paralysis

I

wonder sometimes if we should stop

doing scientif‌ic research on climate

change. As our knowledge about

warming increases, it seems only to

lead to increased political paralysis.

Of late, the major news is that there is

no news. Consider especially the fail-

ure of last year’s Copenhagen summit

and the refusal of the U.S. Congress

to seriously consider climate change

legislation.

Burning fossil fuels causes global

warming. And fossil fuels are at the

core of industrialized societies, includ-

ing agriculture, transportation, and

even water. In the words of President

Obama’s science adviser, John Hol-

dren, “Without energy there is no

economy. Without climate there is no

environment. Without economy and

environment there is no material well-

being, no civil society, no personal or

national security.”

Recent advances in climate change

science stand in stark contrast to

the political stalemate. Two good

starting points are the National

Academy of Sciences’ 2010 report

“Advancing the Science of Climate

Change,” drawing an unequivocal and

strong causal connection between car-

bon dioxide emissions from burning

fossil fuels and global climate change,

and Michael Raupach and Josep

Canadell’s research showing how hu-

man population and economic growth

together are driving atmospheric car-

bon dioxide to increase at an accel-

erating rate. Whereas we previously

thought that climate sensitivity (in-

crease in temperature from doubling

carbon dioxide) was about 3 degrees

Celsius, there is now a real possibility

that it is actually signif‌icantly greater

(e.g., Jim Hansen and colleagues’ Open

Atmospheric Science Journal paper, and

Reto Knutti and Gabriele Hegerl’s re-

cent Nature Geosciences paper). More

concretely, predictions of Arctic sea ice

loss made several years ago have proved

consistently too low (e.g., Donald Per-

ovich and Jacqueline Richter-Menge’s

recent review).

Rather counter intuitively, exactly

when we are unable to muster the po-

litical will to stop burning fossil fuels,

we are also facing real impediments to

maintaining the existing cost structure

and supply. Although we continue to

develop new oil, natural gas, and coal

resources, there is a clear trend for

each new source to bring ever greater

f‌inancial, environmental, energy and

sociological costs. We

no longer prospect

for oil by looking for

surface seeps in Okla-

homa. Now we strip

mine tar in Alberta,

then process it with

massive amounts of

water and natural gas, to produce oil.

Beyond this, though the peaks in coal

and natural gas production are further

out, we are close to peak oil produc-

tion; see Kjell Aleklett and colleagues’

2010 Energy Policy paper.

One might hope that increasing

fossil fuel costs would at least solve

the climate change problem — won’t

more costly fossil fuels lead to less be-

ing burned, thereby ameliorating the

climate change problem? I believe this

unschooled intuition is wrong. Even

the most pessimistic estimates do not

predict a 2 degrees Celsius tempera-

ture increase before 2050. But we face

fossil fuel cost and supply problems in

the much nearer future. As these begin

to bite, I expect energy policy to focus

on short term cost and supply issues,

the longer term climate be damned.

e recent political paralysis on

climate change seems to be part of a

trend toward more confrontational

political approaches to environmen-

tal problem-solving. e 1970 Clean

Air Act amendments passed Congress

with a grand total of one nay vote (and

rather more abstentions). Even as re-

cently as two decades ago, there was

wide bipartisan support for the 1990

Clean Air Act amendments. ings

are dif‌ferent now. James Imhof‌f (R-

Oklahoma), the ranking minority

member of the Senate Environment

and Public Works Committee, has

stated that “I don’t think that anyone

disagrees with the fact that we actually

are in a cold period that started about

nine years ago.”

Ultimately, the natural world

and human society are inextricably

linked. Science has documented in

exquisite detail how human burning

of fossil fuels degrades ecosystems

and alters climate. ere is much less

science predicting how a large human

population, seriously

degraded natural en-

vironments, mount-

ing energy costs, and

a changed climate

place novel pressures

on our political sys-

tems.

Even so, it may be no coincidence

that our political and legal systems

have stopped working at precisely the

moment when our environmental

problems have become most severe.

ese institutions date back centu-

ries, to a time of much smaller human

populations, and an economy driven

by solar energy (i.e., the Magna Carta

and American Revolution). By con-

trast our oil-based economy is barely

half a century old (i.e., post World

War II). Why should we expect that

institutions born centuries ago can

solve today’s problems? Perhaps they

simply cannot.

Craig M. Pease, Ph.D., a research scien-

tist, teaches at the Verm ont Law School En-

vironmental L aw Center. He can be reached

at cpease@ve rmontlaw.edu.

S   L

Future policy may stress

maintaining a cheap

supply of fossil fuels, the

climate be damned