By: David Miron-Wapner

Over the past several weeks, there appears to be a noticeable trend in reporting on climate change. Some of the coverage is pure speculation about connecting a specific extreme weather event with global trends. Jerusalemites, pounded by a 50-year record snowstorm in early December and a mild, nearly dry two months since, seriously ponder that connection. In this ancient, revered city where the interplay of the spiritual and apocalyptic dimensions and the earthly plane of broken trees and severed power lines, speculation about the future takes on an air of prophecy. Just how close to the edge are we? Much too close for comfort, if you ask me.

Image courtesy of basketman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Dealing on a regular basis here at Yoyah with assisting others to achieve their desired futures with our Photograph from the Future strategic planning process, I often imagine scenarios where colors are bright, human communities thrive in balance with the environment and technology continues to progress for our benefit. Backcasting from a positive view of human development in the future means that collectively our global political economy heeded the warnings of objective science whose drumbeat has intensified in the early years of the 21st century.

Taking a sober view, I see few signs that we are truly listening to the bold words of the exceedingly courageous scientists around the world who warn us of the peril just around the corner. Earlier, when data was less absolute, their warnings might have legitimately been dismissed. To continue pursuing more economic growth, consuming and wasting more scarce resources, and our accelerating emissions from burning fossil fuels; that is, business as usual, means ignoring science. Having recently passed the 400 ppm barrier of CO2, levels not seen for 55 million years, long before modern humans walked the earth, not acting swiftly and boldly represents willful negligence and selfish indulgence.

Recently, alongside one prominent headline in the International New York Times about the most recent report of the International Panel on Climate Change concerning potential economic disruption in the absence of action in the next five years, was another which heralded a pull back by European nations on their environmental commitments due to their economic burden in these hard times. Dealing with environmental challenges has always meant economic trade-offs. Most of the time, protecting the environment has lost the battle with economic considerations. This tendency is even more pronounced when we are dealing with the challenge of our age – climate change, the consequences of which will fall primarily upon our descendants.

As a member of our group, Prof. Lester Thurow, once wrote, there is no concept of a distant future in capitalism. This seems equally true for the market system of communist, not capitalist, China, which is now by far the leading producer of greenhouse gases. To make the problem of climate even more wicked, we seem always willing to put off investment for some future generation.

So, as we face more frequent and severe extreme weather events, we fact an “extreme whether” – act now and sacrifice 1% of global GDP to curb greenhouse gas emissions and initiate the transition to a carbon-free economy OR continue pursuing economic and energy growth, fracking the way to condemning future generations to suffering and adapting to a planet much more hostile to human life than we have ever known. Our inaction will require future generations to spend upwards of 5% of global GDP just to stabilize climate and preserve the earth’s life supportive systems. If the pattern of putting off solutions persists, we are all in for an extremely rough ride, without seatbelts or brakes.

So let’s get on with the immediate order of the day – designing a new sustainable energy economy based on the abundance of renewable resources in our current account, not the ancient sunlight embedded in the fossil fuels we withdraw and use at our peril.