Everything living depends on ecology. The planet’s hydrologic cycles provide the water that we use for agriculture and industry. Everything you’ve eaten today depended upon soil ecologies, the carbon cycle–driven largely by photosynthesis, insects, and countless other ecosystem processes. Consider, for example, the things made of wood around you right now. The trees that conjured it out of the air, flourish according the rules and interplay of dynamic complex ecological systems. We survive on the backs bacteria that make up the necessary ecosystem of our gut (You are from three to six pounds of bacteria–there are more bacteria cells in your body than those that make up your body).
In the soil, processes necessary for whatever crops you’ve eaten today, thrive nematodes, insects like springtails, and a complex array of fungi, bacteria, and molds. Without these, the soil is sterile and lifeless, and plants cannot extract the nutrients they need.
Did you enjoy any apples, walnuts, cherries, pears, almonds, peaches, blackberries (and about any berry you can name) this week? Did you enjoy sesame on your buns, or alfalfa fed beef in your bun? Did you put an onion on it? If you answered yes to any of these (and I could make a list ten times as long) then you’ve depended on bees to pollinate these plants that are all dependent on bees to reproduce. (In California bees provide 18 Billion dollars a year in pollination services).
What about water? Did you enjoy any water from mountain streams? The plants, trees, and other things helped pull the water from the clouds, moderate its flow into aquifers so it doesn’t run off the surface in short lived torrents.
Does the economy depend on any of these ecosystem services? In every way. Economic models often have a big input box that says, “Natural Resources” from which everything gets started. Then it’s ignored as if it’s a given that requires nary a thought. There are arguments being made that we cannot afford economically the cost of worrying about climate change. Most of the denial industry is pushed by those with huge incentives against changing our behavior. In a recent book, historian of science Naomi Oreskes (University of California San Diego) has looked closely at how the denial industry in the US has been funded and promoted. Yes follow the money (and if you think I’m getting rich doing this, you will receive a belly laugh from my family). It’s ironic that the only two people, Fred Singer and Fred Seitz who are high profiles deniers, are also former payees of the tobacco industry. We know how honest those claims to tobacco safety turned out.
But I am distracted. Can we afford to pay for trying to stop global warming? We will pay one way or the other. The cost of not doing anything will in the end be the most catastrophic decision we could make if climate change is real. So we see the evidence (scientific, not internet-based, talk radio-based nonsense, as I say over and over, look at the science being published it’s running 1:1000 in favor of anthropogenic climate change being real) coming from everywhere we look, actual temperature measurements, melting glaciers and melting permafrost, ocean acidification, and redistribution of long established species. We ignore this at our peril.
Economies are dependent on ecosystem services. Cultures that ignore this end up collapsing (see Jared Diamond’s Collapse for a closer look at this). We call this supervenience. Economics is completely underwritten by ecologies.
To make the argument that economies are not influenced from ecosystems and changes in climate, you are in effect arguing that they are strongly buffered, meaning that changes in ecology or ecosystems have little effect in the emergent economy. We know this is false. For example, the increase in moisture from the oceans caused freak blizzards in the East this year. Note, I’m not claiming this was caused by climate change; weather and climate are two different things. Weather depends of climate, but there have always been freak storms and assigning cause is practically impossible. However, what if such storms became the norm under a new climate regime? That storm cost billions of dollars to the economy. For example, DC was effectively shut down. Certainly, then Washington DC, if this continued because weather patterns had altered under a new climate regime, would have to invest more heavily in snow removal equipment, infrastructure changes, and other things. People would have to make adjustments to their way of life like buying snow shovels and all weather tires.
The point is that the assumption that with global warming it’s going to be a little warmer everywhere (or colder weather depending on where you live, for example, Northern California and the North West may get wetter and cooler), without other changes in weather patterns, is just wrong. We are pumping energy into a chaotic system. This can mean complete changes in global climate. Do we take the risk that these climate changes might be good so we do nothing? It’s a bad bet. If you think it won’t hurt the economy, please enter the scientific fray and argue how these major ecosystem upheavals (that we are already seeing) are not going to affect the economy. Peer review please.
As a recent article in the Atlantic pointed out, global warming may economically benefit some. People in Greenland are quite pleased with the effects by all reports (see NG story linked below). If Utah get’s wetter winters snow companies my have longer seasons, or they could dry up, no one knows, but the models are calling for drought. And that is the danger. While we can predict to some extent the global increases in temperature and some more large scale effects like melting glaciers (worldwide), ice-free summers in the polar North, ocean acidification, what’s going to happen to local weather patterns is hard to predict. If the gulf stream pump fails because of the melting ice in Greenland (and make no mistake it’s melting in a big way check out this in National Geographic), Europe could be plunged into an ice age. Stronger more frequent hurricanes from the warmer oceans, costal flooding, melting permafrost, could all become part of reality, but how these actually affect things is unknown. In Africa, the long-term drought has caused crop failures, and the retreat of grasslands, and reduced ability to grow crops. What does an inability to grow crops portent for a country? Does widespread poverty increase political stability? I think not. The point is that no one knows what a new climate will do to the weather, and that does affect economies.
We know that given certain carbon inputs the planet will warm. This is as well understood as any science we have. But given the breathtaking uncertainties to the ecological changes this could induce, it would be unethical to carry on as usual. We buy insurance on the presumption of taking care of uncertainties. Common sense says we act to mitigate the uncertainties. The crowd promoting that we wait until we ‘know’ that the planet is warming before we act is like the doctor who says, “All the laboratory tests, from many independent labs, say you have cancer, we have 50 independent models (representing the best modeling practices we know) that say this cancer will kill you if we don’t act now, but hey your lifestyle will likely suffer (maybe, maybe not) if we are wrong, and well, there’s no way to be 100% sure, this is science after all, so let’s just put off treatment until we are sure. OK?”
Our grandchildren are likely to condemn this as the most foolish generation in world history. The generation that stood on the cusp of when something could have been done about planetary change, but clutched their economy so tight, they did nothing. They will end up paying for it. You’d better make sure your arguments that we should do nothing are right, because their world depends on it. And don’t forget you are betting against all of modern science.