There are people who accept climate change is happening, but say we should accept it because the planet has always had cycles of warming.
On that basis, should we abolish laws against murder on the basis that people have always died? The likely response is that murder is different because it is done by humans and isn’t natural. Of course, the overwhelming evidence is that our current warming isn’t natural, but caused by humans, so why should we just accept it when we don’t accept murder?
Many will just say it’s a nonsense comparison. They’ll probably also be driven to point out that there have been periods in the past when the atmospheric CO2 levels have been higher than today. Which is true, though they ignore the fact that the sun was cooler, meaning solar warming was weaker during most of those periods. So today’s levels of about 434ppm would be the equivalent of 2600ppm in the late Ordovician period.
Plus if we consider the most recent period when CO2 was higher, at 500ppm some 50 million years ago, there were relatively few mammals, with sea levels up to 120 feet higher than today. And our first ape ancestors were still 25 million years from appearing. So, it’s probably not going to be ideal conditions for our future generations, especially those living in coastal cities.
Still, even if we’re not worried about CO2 levels of 500ppm or worse, we might want to feel concern at the speed that CO2 levels are increasing. They’re ramping up at a faster rate than before the Permian Great Dying. Even if you’re not familiar with that period in the earth’s history, the name alone should offer some clues that it wasn’t a golden age, with 90% of marine species and 70% of land species wiped out. Reptilian dinosaur ancestors and some burrowing mammals were among those that survived. How are your burrowing skills?
Of course, the reason wealthy people don’t want us to worry about climate change is because it will be so expensive to make the necessary changes to halt climate change. Even though they cause a disproportionate amount of the pollution causing the problem. The wealthiest 1% alone generate as much CO2 as the poorest 62%.
And they don’t worry that the costs of dealing with the damage caused by extreme weather events will be much greater than the cost of prevention. Because that will only be the case if governments actually try to undo the damage caused by extreme weather. In reality it will become far too expensive.
The wealthiest 10% of Americans, with the help of multiple Republican and Democratic party governments, have hoarded 68.3% of all US wealth. They believe all that wealth will allow them to handle the worst effects of climate change. Maybe they’re right, though probably not. But we can be absolutely certain that the poorest 50% of Americans, with just 2.5% of all US wealth between them, will have no way of helping themselves.
So, should the US government try to avoid the worst of climate change for everybody or just try to help the wealthy to deal with it later?
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