Abstract
NEW YORK – Climate change is no longer a future problem. It is here, and the effects are all around. Worse, today’s extreme weather events are just a preview of the pain that awaits humanity in the coming decades, almost regardless of how fast we manage to decarbonize the economy this year or next.
Such sobering observations tend to provoke arguments about the importance of “climate optimism.” Pessimism, after all, demotivates. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream, not a nightmare, for the future his children would inhabit.
I typically join these calls for optimism. The accelerating pace of the clean-energy race is heartening, as is the emergence of positive socioeconomic feedback loops to match all the negative ones associated with climatic tipping points. Still, while the pace of clean-energy deployment is faster than it has ever been, the world overall is racing in the wrong direction: global greenhouse-gas emissions are still rising.
So, how should we talk about this challenge, with these two dynamics tugging in opposite directions?
One answer is to embrace the language of risks and uncertainties. Not too long ago, those resisting climate action were the ones playing up the issue of uncertainty. The “merchants of doubt” – marginal scientists and other commentators in hock to the fossil-fuel industry – focused on our lack of complete knowledge to challenge the strengthening consensus around anthropogenic climate change. Uncertainty was their friend. But for the rest of us, it is public enemy number one. The unknowns and unknowables are what make climate change such an urgent problem.