On the Newness of Climate Change

One thing that we try hard to convey in our trainings is just how recent the explosion in CO2 levels is, in the context of planetary history or even human history. We believe it's worth focusing on this for several reasons:

- it helps people comprehend our context more accurately - the speed and magnitude of change

- it helps diffuse feelings of wrongness or blame - part of the reason we are struggling to respond to this problem is its very speed relative to our evolution and our past

- it seems to help people absorb that these are not ordinary times, that we, by virtue of when we happened to be born, are called to respond to a unique moment in history.

Over the years we've experimented with a few different ways to convey this time dimension. We show a simple animation of human CO2 emissions for the past 10,000 years (since the beginning of human agriculture) with every second representing 100 years. The animation runs for about a minute and a half, with, of course, nothing happening for the first 87 seconds and then an explosive swing upward of the curve in the final few seconds (final few hundred years). The animation says it better than words can - we live in an unprecedented time.

Next week I'm giving a presentation before a climate change rally, and for technical reasons it won't work to use the animation, so I've been thinking about other ways to convey the time dimension of human-induced climate change.

Here's what I'm thinking of trying:

Imagine the journey of our species from its first emergence in Africa to the current moment as a walk across North America - from San Francisco to New York City. On this journey, San Francisco represents the point of departure, our origins, and New York City represents arriving at our current moment.

I plan to ask the audience to picture where it is in that journey that they would guess where we humans begin to burn fossil fuels and disrupt the climate?

Where would you guess? Salt Lake City? Indianapolis?

Even though I know all the numbers I found myself surprised at what my calculations showed:

If the lifetime of Homo sapiens is represented by a 3000 mile journey, the burning of fossil fuels begins about 4 miles from the journey's end. In other words, the long walk from San Francisco, across the Rocky Mountains, the Plains, across the Mississippi, across Appalachia, and into New York State itself, all of that distance represents a period where we were creating culture and art and languages and stories, believing in things and acting in ways that did not disrupt the climate. Only the last four miles of that journey, through the streets of New York City itself represent the period of our experimentation with fossil fuels.

Something to think about, hmmm?

I'll be sure to let you know if this metaphor is helpful at the rally next week. In the meantime, it would be great to hear from you: what have you found effective to convey the time dimensions of climate change?

Protecting The Environment Versus Dealing With Global Warming

I just read the interesting results of a January 2007 survey of US attitudes towards global warming. One thing it makes clear is that the tireless work of all the folks educating about climate change is still badly needed.

A few facts from the survey:

While 77% of Americans believe that temperatures are indeed rising, only 47% say that human activity is the cause.

And the number of Americans who say that global warming is a problem that calls for immediate government action has fallen slightly since the last similar poll in August 2006. (From 61% to 55%).

One other interesting point from the survey data: While 57% of Americans felt that "protecting the environment" is a top priority for our leaders, only 37% felt that "dealing with global warming" should be.

While it is tempting to roll one's eyes and wonder what leads so many people to think that we can protect the environment without dealing with global warming, there may also be nugget of insight here for those of us who teach about global warming and climate change. Notice the two different verbs used by the survey: "protect" versus "deal."

Here's a thought experiment: Apply those two words to something dear to you – your children, your household, a local park. Which feels like a higher calling: protecting it or dealing with condition or problem that might threaten it? Do you want to protect your children or deal with the dangerous intersection on their walk to school?

Well, it depends, right? If the intersection is dangerous enough, dealing with it and protecting your kids might well be one and the same thing. But most parent's driving impulse is protection, not "dealing."

And so I would argue that our job in teaching and communicating about climate change is to tap into people's strong desire to protect what is precious. That's what carbon taxes and energy efficiency and all the rest are about: protecting the Earth we depend upon.

Inflows and Outflows

One basic – but still often misunderstood – point about climate change is that the human species is adding CO2 to the atmosphere at roughly twice the rate of net removal. In other words, every year more than half of the CO2 we add to the atmosphere accumulates there, creating a heat-trapping blanket. Every citizen should know this fact and understand its implications:

1. Freezing emissions at current rates would lead to constantly increasing LEVELS of CO2 in the atmosphere, because every year we'd be adding more CO2 than the Earth could remove.

2. Stabilizing CO2 levels would require cuts in emissions of 60-80%.

3. Lowering CO2 levels would require even deeper cuts than this.

It is more challenging than you might expect to convey this set of ideas.

Systems thinkers often use the metaphor of a bathtub and describe our current situation as one in which the tub is filling twice as fast as it is draining. A wonderful short paper by John Sterman and Linda Booth-Sweeney, Why We Can't Wait, uses this metaphor very effectively.



One thing that has always troubled me, though, is that the metaphor of bathtub, while instantly helpful for understanding why emissions cuts of more than half are needed, breaks down in trying to help people understand how heat is trapped by rising levels of CO2. To help with this, in my presentations I represent the level of CO2 in the atmosphere as a thickening ring (or blanket) around the Earth.




This provides a simple, visual way to picture what happens if emissions exceed the rate of removal.



The real communications prize would go, I think, to the metaphor that combines both bathtub and blanket. In my presentations I stretch accuracy a bit and ask people to picture a blanket made of many layers. I ask them to picture the layers constantly being added (emissions) and removed (net removals). As long as emissions are larger than removals the blanket will grow thicker, trapping more heat. It's not elegant, but it works, providing an image people seem able to hold in their minds.

Still, I'd love it if some creative thinker came up with a better bathtub-blanket than that.

Anybody?