On Tuesday, Oct. 24, and Wednesday, Oct. 25, students walking up Bascom Hill were led through a hypothetical progression of climate events caused by global warming as represented by a series of posters, culminating in a "solutions" poster featuring ways to help prevent such events from occurring. This event demonstrated the potential consequences of what tremendous evidence suggests to be human-induced global warming. More importantly, however, this event demonstrated to students that we are fully capable of reversing this climate trend. Unfortunately, The Badger Herald, after neglecting to discuss the event with a single member of our group, inexplicably chose to place a front-page photo with a single, blatantly antagonistic caption claiming that "students [were] bombarded with global warming 'solutions'…"
Such a knee-jerk reaction does nothing to further the dialogue on global warming. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing, and the Earth is warming rapidly. Despite tremendous amounts of evidence from a variety of fields that the recent warming is a result of human carbon dioxide emissions, is it possible that this theory could still be wrong? Yes. But what the evidence tells us is that this theory is the most likely scenario. And this most likely scenario involves the potential for catastrophic climate changes that, while not likely, becomes more and more likely as long as we continue to emit carbon dioxide. Thus, when we do not take action, we increase the risk we pose to life on Earth.
So what exactly is meant by "solutions" (this time without negative connotation) to global warming? Simple: Solutions are efforts to decrease this risk. If we can decrease this risk, we improve our chances for a stable climate future. And one of the easiest ways to decrease this risk is at an individual level: Conserve energy (turn off lights, etc.) and you will reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, thereby lowering the risk we face as a global community. Hence, if humans are indeed capable of causing global warming, we are equally capable of stopping it.
What's the moral of the story? Despite all of the squabbling over the science behind the issue, the bottom line is this: The need to take action is not a scientific issue, but is in fact purely a risk management issue. The stakes are too high for us to sit idle any longer.
Here is another way to think of it:
The large majority of homeowners have fire insurance. Do they expect their house catch fire in the future? Of course not; the likelihood of your house going up in flames is very low, perhaps 1-2 percent — in your lifetime. So why do people get fire insurance? Because a fire poses a major threat — it could potentially destroy everything you own, maybe even kill you.
Effectively, then, preventative action is our "global warming insurance:" We may not expect climate catastrophe to occur due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions, but simply because the potential exists, we have no choice but to take action to prevent it from occurring. And it is important to note that, in this case, if we don't take action we won't have the luxury of building a new house.
If you would like to discuss anything related to this topic or to my commentary, please e-mail me. Discussion is vital to informed public policy.
To get involved on campus with global warming, contact Dan Chavas for Global Warming: FACT or Maggie King for Big Red Go Green, at e-mail ([email protected]).
Dan Chavas ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in atmospheric and oceanic sciences.