The Coming Meltdown by Bill McKibben
New York Review of Books, Volume 53, Number 1 · January 12, 2006
Bill McKibben has a great article in a (well by now, older) issue of the New York Review of Books. In The Coming Meltdown, McKibben reviews two books focusing on the science and politics of global warming. He compares the threat of global warming to the problems we faced during the era of nuclear proliferation. Although we passed through a similar period of almost irrational fear with global warming, that concern has now waned.
Each day, more scientific evidence flows in documenting the destruction that our habits are having on the global environment.
It’s frightening to think that our current leaders lack the capability to understand the impact of these findings — or that they don’t have informed advisors distiliing the information for them.
Why even bother funding science research if we aren’t going to heed its findings? Sure, preventive measures might be costly to the economy *today*, but what will the costs be of seas that are 80 feet higher? At this point, it’s looking like it is even more and more of a moot point, it doesn’t matter what small changes we might be able to coax our governments into employing. The changes that have already started to occur (such as large scale melting of tropical glaciers) will catalyze themselves at an even faster and faster rate. Whereas it used to look like the ramifications of these changes were to be left to our children in the latter part of this century, it is becoming increasingly clear that we ourselves will reap the consequences.
Conservation and controls at the national level are vital; teaching people how to be good global citizens is essential. The former is achievable although it will undoubtedly take at least a change of administration if not changes in the party controlling Congress. That isn’t because the Democrats have a very strong record on global warming but at the very least they will talk about it instead of just burying their head in the sand of the Arabian peninsula.
Harvard’s James McCarthy sums it up:
Yikes.
