I just recently finished reading Elizabeth Kolbert’s book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. Kolbert focuses the first half of the book on exploring the places, people, and creatures that climate change has already begun to affect, and the second half on the policy debates under the Bush administration, as well as the state of scientific research at the time. Originally published in 2006, the book is now eight years old, making it somewhat outdated. However, its age also makes Kolbert’s narrative about people suffering the consequences of a warming Earth even more intimidating. She writes about the receding and disappearing glaciers that we often hear about, but she also delves into the issue of permafrost thawing in Alaska and other northern areas, the migration of butterfly species northward in England as temperatures rise, and the risks to coastal communities of sea level rise. When Kolbert traveled to Alaska to research the book and meet with one of the leading experts on permafrost, she found homes and other structures that were beginning to collapse due to the thawing of the ground below. It can be easy living in a temperate climate to forget about the human impacts of climate change that are already being felt. It seems like here in the Northeast, climate change only becomes a part of our public discourse after a major storm event.
After finishing the book (which I highly recommend), I did a little research to see what the current state of climate change policy is under the Obama administration. A look at the administration’s climate change page shows that the administration has made a greater effort recently to work with the international community in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. However, it seems that most of the agreements and coalitions call for a general reduction in greenhouse gas emissions without hard numerical goals to meet. While the Obama administration has made an effort to begin the process of reducing carbon dioxide emissions here in the US through the limits set on coal plant emissions built in the future, it seems like too little, too late. As Kolbert explains, climate change is happening and it is affecting people now. Emissions globally continue to increase and the current level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is around 400 ppm (according to NOAA). Besides the other reasons of energy security, national security, and the environment, investing in sustainable and renewable energy sources and reducing our individual energy use are crucial for getting emissions under control, and even then there is no guarantee that we won’t feel the effects of climate change. The people in Alaska are clearly feeling it already and relatively small levels of sea level rise will be enough to inundate many coastal communities, besides the recent extreme and sporadic weather patterns that have been attributed to climate change in the media (though not in any scientific publication that I know of). Climate change and its policy are complicated issues, and I plan to delve into them further in my next few posts.