Climate Change: What We Can Do

by Chris Chatteris SJ · November 7, 2013

The debate on climate change has been couched in neutral language, but it is time to shout Fire! in the theatre, argues Chris Chatteris SJ.

A lot of ink has been spilt over how to talk about climate change. Some people even regard the term climate change as fatally freighted, thanks to oil company spin doctors who successfully pushed it as a more neutral-sounding alternative to global warming. To say that this is a topic where commentators have had to watch their words is the proverbial understatement.

Journalists have had to tread carefully in order not to be accused of unscientific alarmism and exaggeration, and to avoid being dismissively lampooned as bunny-huggers.

Scientists have been wary of overstating their case for fear they would cease to sound like the cool rationalists we expect them to be.

Climate activists have been guarded about over-dramatisation because they thought that if their reports read like disaster movies, then ordinary people would simply throw up their hands in despair and do nothing.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has had to produce reports which were always the summary of a vast number of scientific papers.

So while the overwhelming consensus pointed to a pretty dire situation, the exercise has tended to come up with documents of a sober, muted tone.

The trouble is that all this sweet reasonableness and fair-minded tentativeness means that those who can distinctly smell the smoke of the fire in the theatre and whose every instinct is to bellow Fire! have schooled themselves to utter circumlocutions sotto voce.

Of course this is an outcome that those who profit by inaction could only dream of.

By contrast, Kevin Anderson, deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Britain, has been described as the only adult in the room when it comes to climate change.

A report co-authored with a colleague puts the situation this way: Analysis suggests that despite high-level statements to the contrary, there is now little to no chance of maintaining the global mean surface temperature at or below 2C. Moreover, the impacts associated with 2C have been revised upwards, sufficiently so that 2C now more appropriately represents the threshold between dangerous and extremely dangerous climate change.

In other, more simple, words: humanity has all but lost the battle to keep the average increase in global temperature below 2C, and the scientists now believe that 2C is dangerous, and anything over that is extremely dangerous.

In a YouTube presentation (bit.ly/QXxhKS), Prof Anderson spells this out with a series of simple, compelling graphs.

His conclusion is that his peers in the scientific world have, for one reason or other, effectively failed to shout Fire!

His concern is that humanity will overshoot 2C and push the temperature up to an average increase of 4C.

For humanity, it’s a matter of life or death, he says. We will not make all human beings extinct as a few people with the right sort of resources may put themselves in the right parts of the world and survive. But I think it’s extremely unlikely that we wouldn’t have mass death at 4C. If you have got a population of nine billion by 2050 and you hit 4C, 5C or 6C, you might have half a billion people surviving.

Has he fallen into the problem of inducing hopeless despair? He thinks not, because he adds that there is some good news, namely that a concerted effort by a minority of the earth’s population can lay the foundation of a solution.

The point is that 80% of the climate problem is caused by 20% of the people because it is that 20% that puts out 80% of the greenhouse gases. These people are mostly aware, informed and unlike most of the poor capable of changing their lifestyles.

Of course the ones burning most of the coal and oil are you and I. But we are the ones who can make significant reductions in our energy usage. And yes, he does say that we will need to include the 300 million Chinese who now enjoy a middle-class existence in this effort.

Another way of slicing the pie is the calculation that a mere 1% are responsible for 50% of greenhouse gas emissions the super-emitters.

Prof Anderson argues that we, the 20%, need to reduce our demand for energy because the supply side (Eskom, Sasol, oil/gas companies) won’t stop supplying while there is a demand and a profit to be made from the demand.

He also reminds us that because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for a hundred years, it is terribly important that we begin reducing our output of the gas immediately.

In the YouTube video, Prof Anderson shows that if drivers got their cars’ emissions down to the latest German emissions standards (either by driving more efficient cars or by using our existing vehicles less and more efficiently) this would be a big start, and not particularly onerous.

The other things we should do are to cut down on our flying (airport prelates, priests and religious take note!), on meat and animal products, and to make our water heating systems more efficient. Presumably most of us are already recyclingnow that wasn’t too painful was it?

There are plenty of good self-interested reasons for reducing our carbon footprints in this way. One is health. Who hasn’t gone down with a bad case of flu after a flight?

Another is wealth. If we can reduce our use of electricity, petrol and meat, that will contribute to controlling the inflation of our monthly budget. Then we can invest the savings in the next boom industry rooftop solar panels which will enhance the virtuous cycle.

Virtue is its own reward here, but of course it’s also simply the right thing to do for our children and all future generations.

And for Christians, climate change is a sign of the times, perhaps the sign of the times, demanding our practical response.

Now is the time!