June 10, 2004

After the Day After Tomorrow

BY DURWOOD ZAELKE, co-author of Industry Genius and co-director of the Program on Governance for Sustainable Development, at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, UCSB.

The Day After Tomorrow doesn’t give us much time. Sometimes, the deliberation of disaster has the benefit of reform. Nuclear war can become so unacceptable that the weapons are disarmed. Terrorism can become so vivid that peaceful dissent is encouraged and democracy championed. AIDS can come so close to home that global action is taken. And perhaps the vivid images of environmental collapse in a disaster film can stimulate action for sustainability.   

In the film, melting polar ice alters the salinity levels of the world’s oceans, shutting down the system of ocean currents that warms most of the planet. Tidal waves pummel Manhattan, 5-pound balls of hail pound the Midwest, and tornadoes punish Los Angeles. Unprecedented Arctic temperatures plunge the United States into a winter twice as cold as anything on record.

And all this occurs in only five days, which makes for a thrilling and frightening movie. But what is the likelihood of such rapid climate change events or other consequences of greenhouse emissions? How plausible is the science?

Hollywood’s effort to depict a climate change catastrophe is just that: Hollywood. Five days is an absurd timeframe for a shutdown of the thermohaline heat conveyor, the deep ocean circulatory system that carries heat from the tropics to the North Atlantic enabling Europe to grow flowers at the same latitude that is home to polar bears in North America.

But the film is on solid ground with its underlying premise: Climate change will result in catastrophic events that will catch victims by surprise. The shutdown of our ocean heat conveyor is probably the worst-case scenario, but even a less major climatic shift would unleash chaos and catastrophe.

But not in five days. Perhaps not 10 years. But possibly within your lifetime, and certainly within the lifetime of our children’s grandchildren.

The truth is that humans are now conducting an experiment in atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide that has no historic precedent. All humans, including scientists, hope for the best and are reluctant to declare all is lost. Based on paleoclimatic, or fossil, evidence painstakingly pieced together over the past few decades, scientists now know that there were abrupt climate changes in the past, apparently when the deep ocean heat conveyor shut down. 

Scientists believe that the same mechanisms make it not merely possible but probable that similar change will happen in the future. The expected cause will be too much fresh water in the Atlantic Ocean. Melting Arctic ice sheets will change precipitation patterns, stopping the saltier water out of the tropics from plunging down to the deep ocean when it reaches the North Atlantic. This plunge of saltier water is the engine that keeps the heat conveyor circulating around the world to moderate the temperature in Europe and North America. Stop it and our winters are predicted to be twice as cold as the coldest winters on record.

Flicking a Switch

The study of the shutdown of the ocean heat conveyor is part of a new field of science, which studies Rapid Climate Change Events, or RCCEs (pronounced “rickeys”). The Pentagon is taking RCCEs seriously enough to develop its own worst-case scenario analysis for rapid climate change, based on the same mechanism depicted in The Day After. The Pentagon’s scenario describes how RCCEs could destabilize the geopolitical environment. Food shortages from decreased agricultural production, decreased availability of fresh water in key regions, drought and flooding due to changed precipitation patterns, disruption to energy supplies from sea ice, and increases in violent weather events are all identified as resource constraints that could lead to geopolitical destabilization and “skirmishes, battles, and even war.” The Pentagon’s report concludes that the threat of climate chaos warrants elevating the issue to a national security concern.

The National Academy of Science (NAS), the nation’s premier scientific body, assembled its own experts who concluded that rapid climate change is “inevitable.”  Their report, commissioned under the Bush administration, is titled “Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises.” The NAS report compares the eventual shutdown of the ocean heat conveyor to a light switch, where the “freshening” of North Atlantic waters pushes the system past its threshold, “just as the slowly increasing pressure of a finger eventually flips a switch and turns on a light.” It may have been more appropriate to imagine the light turning off.

In addition to the shutdown of the ocean heat conveyor, there are other RCCEs to consider—and perhaps other profitable movies to be made—starting with the frightening prospect of rising sea levels. If the ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic melt, we’ll see an 80-meter rise in sea level. The catastrophe is clear: Most of the world’s population lives within 80 meters of sea level.

While most scientists believe the ice sheets will continue to melt slowly, there are others who caution that there is another mechanism to beware of: surface melting that allows water to percolate to the bedrock, where it lubricates the surface underneath the ice sheet and enables gravity to pull the ice into the ocean. Icebergs the size of Rhode Island are already breaking off the sheets. Unfortunately, as with the ocean heat conveyor, climate scientists don’t know what the thresholds are for the ice sheets.

But forcing more heat into the Earth’s climate system is already causing the climate to change. As one scientist puts it, our climate system is like an “angry beast” and we’re poking it with a sharp stick. Just last month, more than five feet of rain fell on Haiti and the Dominican Republic in just 36 hours, killing at least 900 people. We should not be surprised, either, by last year’s 700 floods, storms, and other calamities that claimed 75,000 lives worldwide and caused an estimated $65 billion in economic damage.

Losses as a result of natural disasters have been doubling every decade, reaching $1 trillion in the past 15 years. Extreme weather events will cost an estimated $150 billion per year in insured losses, according to Swiss Re, one of the world’s leading re-insurers. These estimates don’t include the risks of RCCEs. Swiss Re is a leader in urging companies to reduce climate emissions, even threatening to cancel insurance for corporate directors and officers who fail to respond.

A Precautionary Approach

What’s to be done, besides enjoying the adventure of The Day After Tomorrow? The first thing is to step up the pace of our proposed solutions to climate change. We’re still stuck in the mindset that climate change is about the gradual warming of the Earth’s surface, when we now know that there are other threats from rapid climate change events. If glaciers are going to melt at a not-so-glacial pace, our efforts to meet these new challenges need be equally swift and dynamic.

We also need to stabilize our emissions of greenhouse gases at a level the world’s climate system can tolerate. We’re not sure where this level is, but most scientists believe that if we can keep the concentrations of greenhouse gases to twice what they were before the Industrial Revolution, we may be able to avoid catastrophic climate change and cope with the changes that are already in the system.

Beginning January 1, 2005, the European Union will institute the world’s first mandatory, region-wide cap on greenhouse emissions and implement an emissions permit trading scheme, an economically efficient method for achieving large-scale reductions in climate emissions.

The new EU law implements the Union’s commitment under the international climate change treaty, called the Kyoto Protocol. Even though Russia might actually benefit from climate change, the European Union has pressured President Vladimir Putin into announcing last week that Russia may be ready to sign the Kyoto Protocol. His signature is needed to bring the treaty into force and give it the status of a formal international law. The current U.S. administration, in contrast, has withdrawn from the Kyoto Protocol, continues to question the science, and relies solely on voluntary efforts to coax industry to reduce greenhouse emissions.

Even if Russia ratifies and Kyoto becomes law, it will have to be amended both to impose cuts on developing countries such as China and India, which make up 40 percent of the world’s population, and to strengthen cuts by the wealthiest countries. The weak capacity of developing countries to implement environmental treaties—because of their weak institutions, including legislatures, courts, and agencies—also will have to be addressed, starting with the same funding commitment that was made with the ozone treaty.

If any place can fight climate change and find the profit in the battle, it surely is California, with its anything-is-possible attitude. With his blend of Hollywood profits and pragmatic politics, Governor Schwarzenegger may be the one to lead the state to pioneer the environmental version of Moore’s Law, which predicted the doubling of computer power every 18 months and helped fuel one of the most creative and profitable developments in history. Solving the coming climate challenge requires the same inventive genius and the same acceleration of technological development. It also will provide the same potential for profit and wealth creation. 

And if that doesn’t work, the new tycoons will be those who buy the next beachfront property, starting at 80 meters up in the hills of California, along with those who supply private armies to serve as security guards to keep the new barbarians from the gates. Oh, and don’t forget the lawyers. Somebody will have to pay for climate change, and there will be armies of lawyers to fight the battle over liability.

As one scientist puts it, our climate system is like an ‘angry beast’ and we’re poking it with a sharp stick. •