Our choice: delay the inevitable, or hasten it

This column originally appeared in the Williston Observer on April 24, 2008.

Our choice: delay the inevitable, or hasten it

Our lives are full of unstoppable cycles: the sweeping of a second hand on a clock, the rising and setting of the sun, the waxing and waning of the moon, the orbit of the earth around the sun. Of each of these we will all, hopefully, see many.

Some others, we could live an entire, full life, and never see - Halley's Comet comes every 75 or 76 years, and some born after its last visible visit in 1986 may not make it to the next, in 2061.

Other cycles are so vast that, practically speaking, they may as well happen only in theory. Our solar system, for example, rotates around our galactic core every 250 million years.

One cycle is of particular interest to us today. Our planet has a regular cycle of ice ages, one of which we are, scientifically speaking, still in the midst of. An ice age in underway as long as significant icing exists over land masses, such as we have in Greenland and Antarctica.

Within an ice age, we cycle still more finely between glacial and interglacial periods. Ice cores taken at Antarctica give evidence for at least the last four of these cycles, spaced roughly 100,000 years apart.

100,000 years may as well be 250 million for the average human, blessed with, perhaps 100 years of life. In our planet's past, though, the cycles have progressed naturally, without any outside influence (save the odd massive volcanic eruption or asteroid strike).

Presumably, the current cycle would continue undiminished and unhurriedly, but this time, the world has a new variable. Scientists, known much more for coming to contemplative conclusions than with wild leaps of faith, agree that the climate is warming quicker than it would naturally - the new variable, of course, is us.

The pictures of future shorelines, which you may have seen in An Inconvenient Truth, either the book or movie, are scary. Under another three feet of water, some South Pacific islands will disappear. Much of San Francisco Bay, submerged. New Orleans deluged by more water than any levee could handle. Florida, Boston, Washington DC, New York City, all in danger.

These things will happen eventually, no matter what we do. What we are doing is hastening the process. Occurring at nature's pace, we might be able to cope. If New Orleans was under water in 3000 years, we would surely have time to move things about. But if it happens in 300 years, or 100, or 10, then can we possibly move fast enough?

We don't know exactly how much we're hastening the inevitable, but what's clear is that we are hastening it. Some argue that the damage has already been done, and nothing we do can reverse it. Maybe. But, is it a chance we can take?

One challenge is convincing everyone, and I mean everyone, that there is a problem. If the United States and Europe stopped all greenhouse gas emissions, the problem would not go away. Emissions would continue from Asia and Africa.

But like trying to convince teenagers that they should begin saving for retirement, it is very hard to balance a far-off concern with immediate concerns. Even if we could prove that Manhattan will be under water 150 years hence unless we stop using cars today, would that cause anyone to bicycle to work tomorrow?

The naysayers will parrot that the warming trends we see are natural ones; that we will see disaster coming long before it gets here; and that we can plan to deal with the adverse effects in enough time to avoid dire consequences.

But the warming trends are far from natural - they are accelerated. We already have seen some effects - Katrina, the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf, heat waves in Europe, disappearing islands in Kiribati. As for planning, government is loathe to request money from taxpayers to fund projects to staunch the effects of rising sea levels, and taxpayers are loathe to hand the money over.

Humans will adapt. Our ancestors withstood the last glacial period, and our progeny will withstand the next interglacial period. There will inevitably be costs, both in blood and treasure. But the costs to the future generations can be limited if we are willing to change our behaviors. I don't expect us to be totally selfless, but I do hope and expect that we won't continue to be totally selfish.