The Global Warming Debate - A Test for Homo Sapiens

By now, just about everyone in the blog universe has written something on Climate Change. Believer, skeptic, denier; whatever camp you fit into, you're probably getting pretty tired of the debate itself. Kyoto was a partial success that turned into a failure. Copenhagen was a circus that not only failed to achieve results but actually added 46 thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide. (Compare that with the republic of Chad where 11 million people contributed less than 400 thousand tonnes of CO2 in the entire year of 2006).

I've tried to follow the debate and all I've gotten is confused. Hockey sticks, ice cores, ice sheets shrinking (or are they expanding), temperature charts, the medieval warm period - after a while it all becomes a blur of claims and counter-claims. And don't get me started on the personal attacks. The scientists who support the theory of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming know that they must do so to keep the government research funding going. And of course those who don't are a bunch of industry shills and right-wing economists. So, it's understandable that people tune out the whole debate.

Understandable, yes, but not desireable. At some future point, scientists and historians are going to look back on this debate and pronounce one group right, or at least more right than the other. To me, though, it hardly matters whether AGW turns out to be hype generated by alarmist scientists or a prudent warning ignored by economists and industry-backed hacks. What really matters is the quality of public debate. And that hasn't been pretty.

What's undeniable but not widely discussed is that our species is capable of doing things that have marked impacts on the biosphere. Our ability to affect the carrying capacity of the planet increases with each technological advance, with each economic expansion and with each new birth. We have been running into planetary limits (such as global fish stocks) for decades but it's been confined to the economic margins so far. Limiting CO2 is the first time we've had to deal with a planetary limit that would seriously affect economic growth. The viability of our species will ultimately depend on whether we are capable of dealing with these limits in a way that avoids armed conflict. Because even if CO2 proves not to be the serious hazard that many believe, there will be something else.