Recently, I noticed a small press story announcing an underwater fiber optic cable linking Europe, India, and east Africa -- a few inches of type indicative of an astonishing advance in global communications.
Most of us are unaware of the number of such cables that snake across the ocean floor to link us via telephone, fax, television, data transfer, email, and Internet connection. We call Europe as if it was just down the road; we email Japan as if it was just across the bay. We take it all for granted and exploit the astonishing value of connection for our businesses and our personal endeavors.
But Africa! We envision an endless desert, poverty, an image of backwardness and isolation antithetical to the technology and obsessive communication in our own lives. Visiting Africa, of course, both denies and confirms this vision by the stunning juxtaposition of affluence with poverty, of entrepreneurial optimism with desperation and hopelessness.
In July, via a 17,000 kilometer submarine fiber optic cable, SEACOM, a company 77% owned by African investors, completed a global network between France, India, south and east Africa was completed and commissioned, linking London, Marseilles and Europe, Delhi and south Asia, with Johannesburg, Nairobi, Kampala, Kigali, and Addis Ababa. The cable has an enormous capacity for data transfer -- 1.2 terabytes per second -- to enable high definition TV, peer-to-peer networks, IPTV, and surging Internet demand at prices realistic for the African market.
The ownership structure varies for each segment of the cable, ensuring local ownership of the cable segments connecting individual countries and to comply with regulations in those countries. The cable backbone along the east coast of Africa and to India and Europe is owned by SEACOM. The segments connecting to individual countries are either 100% (South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, India, France) or 35% (Tanzania, Kenya) locally owned by local investors. A small group of international investors with no other telecommunication involvement in the individual countries constitute a minority share.
Initial investment was also provided by the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, an international development agency dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship and building economically sound enterprises in the developing world. The Fund is active in 16 countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Kyrgyz Republic, Mali, Mozambique, Pakistan, Senegal, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania and Uganda.
Suddenly, for better or for worse, Africa is connected. The World Ocean Observatory, for example, can now link to teachers and students in African universities, schools, and environmental groups, heretofore almost impossible. We can now provide ocean curriculum, interact with classrooms in real time, and transfer distance-learning modules with ease to African ocean nations. The sea connects all things!
As importantly, there is now also bandwidth to meet the needs of the Confederations Cup and the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa, as well as the growing requirements of the economies in the countries served. I suppose it is fair to say that football and finance are international forces comparable to the connective power and community engagement of the ocean itself.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
Ocean, Climate, and Copenhagen
As part of a global coalition of ocean organizations, the World Ocean Observatory is preparing a new independent website on Ocean and Climate to be launched at the climate summit in Copenhagen in December. The purpose is to demonstrate the absolute connection between two dynamic natural systems with pervasive impact on almost every aspect of our lives.
The problem lies in a disconnect in our thinking. It is amazing to see how indifferent climate policy has been to ocean issues; indeed, even Al Gore in "An Inconvenient Truth" almost belittles the ocean as a secondary function of climate when in fact it is very much the other way around. The specific language being developed for Copenhagen has largely ignored the ocean, and only through the intervention by many NGO’s, in the United States and Europe, has that oversight begun to be remedied. It may still not be enough.
But of course that is the fear for the proposed new treaty in general – not enough, not soon enough, not effective enough. The situation is plagued by two political divides -- between the developed nations and between the developed nations and the rest of developing world. The first is a function of commitment and degree. In the United States, for example, many individuals and political figures are unwilling to accept the research on global warming and its predictable impacts and oppose legislative actions, treaties, and behavioral change on ideological grounds. In addition, there is a divide between the nations over the type and degree of action necessary – cap and trade versus carbon tax for example.
The second divide has the developing nations objecting to change required by conditions not of their making and insisting on enormous financial aid to subsidize the cost of imposed new strategies for adaptation and mitigation. The developed countries want to invest in very specific actions with measurable outcomes, while the developing countries want to receive unrestricted compensation.
But the dichotomy is false. In fact, the developing world has as much to lose as the developed nations, should the research models prove to be true. But there is no need to await the future when radical change in weather events is already disrupting traditional patterns of settlement, agriculture, and health. The reports of unexpected, extreme weather phenomena are pervasive – hurricanes and cyclones, droughts and wild fires, mudslides and floods, affecting thousands of people around the world. Consequent social disruption, pollution of water supplies, physical and economic collapse, and the outbreak of previously controlled diseases are just some of the outcomes already tragically prevalent in coastal and other communities around the world.
Fifteen of the world’s largest cities are located in the coastal zone, including New York, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Cairo. We know the devastation of Katrina in New Orleans, an event from which we in the US seem to have learned very little. Sea level rise and coastal surge are two of the most obvious indicators of the chain of connection between CO2 emissions, global warming, and polar and glacial melt. And yet we dither and dispute, day in day out, protecting our narrowest interest and denying both cause and effect, ignoring the research, debating the policy, and doing little in a collective global catharsis of ignorance and selfishness that will do harm to us all and to our children.
The problem lies in a disconnect in our thinking. It is amazing to see how indifferent climate policy has been to ocean issues; indeed, even Al Gore in "An Inconvenient Truth" almost belittles the ocean as a secondary function of climate when in fact it is very much the other way around. The specific language being developed for Copenhagen has largely ignored the ocean, and only through the intervention by many NGO’s, in the United States and Europe, has that oversight begun to be remedied. It may still not be enough.
But of course that is the fear for the proposed new treaty in general – not enough, not soon enough, not effective enough. The situation is plagued by two political divides -- between the developed nations and between the developed nations and the rest of developing world. The first is a function of commitment and degree. In the United States, for example, many individuals and political figures are unwilling to accept the research on global warming and its predictable impacts and oppose legislative actions, treaties, and behavioral change on ideological grounds. In addition, there is a divide between the nations over the type and degree of action necessary – cap and trade versus carbon tax for example.
The second divide has the developing nations objecting to change required by conditions not of their making and insisting on enormous financial aid to subsidize the cost of imposed new strategies for adaptation and mitigation. The developed countries want to invest in very specific actions with measurable outcomes, while the developing countries want to receive unrestricted compensation.
But the dichotomy is false. In fact, the developing world has as much to lose as the developed nations, should the research models prove to be true. But there is no need to await the future when radical change in weather events is already disrupting traditional patterns of settlement, agriculture, and health. The reports of unexpected, extreme weather phenomena are pervasive – hurricanes and cyclones, droughts and wild fires, mudslides and floods, affecting thousands of people around the world. Consequent social disruption, pollution of water supplies, physical and economic collapse, and the outbreak of previously controlled diseases are just some of the outcomes already tragically prevalent in coastal and other communities around the world.
Fifteen of the world’s largest cities are located in the coastal zone, including New York, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Cairo. We know the devastation of Katrina in New Orleans, an event from which we in the US seem to have learned very little. Sea level rise and coastal surge are two of the most obvious indicators of the chain of connection between CO2 emissions, global warming, and polar and glacial melt. And yet we dither and dispute, day in day out, protecting our narrowest interest and denying both cause and effect, ignoring the research, debating the policy, and doing little in a collective global catharsis of ignorance and selfishness that will do harm to us all and to our children.
Monday, September 14, 2009
The Rejuvenatory Power of the Ocean
This summer I was able to get away for three weeks at sea, not a bold deep water crossing but that wonderful cruising, mostly down east, that is such a rejuvenatory part of living in Maine. With wife and dog, we gunk-holed from cove to cove, occasionally rafting up with friends, mostly going it alone, guided by wind and weather. Two storms passed through – one had us on a mooring in the Benjamin River, the other had us cozy for two days in the Mud Hole at Great Wass Island.
It has been a strange summer for us all, and instructive in how weather can affect not only our gardens, but also our psyches. The constant rain of June and July, and the unavailability of the boat, taken to Nova Scotia by our partners, made for an odd compensatory mixture of compulsive work and introspection, a different way of being, provocative, frustrating, sometimes depressing. It was typical to hear grousing and complaint, dour thoughts and dire opinions, from friends and neighbors.
I spent more time reading, for me always a diversion, a dive into the calming waters of narrative, a good story, the odd poem. I had been recommended an ocean book, The Sea Can Wash Away All Evils, by Kimberly C. Patton, a professor of comparative and historical study of religion at the Harvard Divinity School (Columbia University Press, New York, 2007). I was unsure about an academic text with chapter titles like "Ocean as Divinity and Scapegoat," or "The Crisis of Modern Pollution," or "The Purifying Sea in the Religious Imagination." But Professor Patton surprised me with her observations about the sea and the supernatural, the marine rituals of ancient Greece, Hindu submarine fire, and Sedna, the Inuit indwelling spiritual force, or Sea Mother. Part historian, part theologian, part folklorist, part cultural anthropologist, Patton made me think about the ocean again differently, to pause the pursuit of the science or economics or governance of the marine ecosystem, and immerse myself in the psychological swim, the realization and understanding of value in the ocean that is aesthetic, moral, perhaps divine, that has been known, articulated, and expressed ceremonially for all time.
Her text explores the idea of pollution as both the unreflected dumping of waste into the ocean, a kind of senseless vandalism, and as a rejuvenatory element that can cleanse us of despair. “In tons of water,” she writes. “in saltiness, in bottomless depth and endless horizon, and, above all, in the many forms of ceaseless motion, human populations, especially those who live along the littoral, see – and have always seen – in the world’s oceans a mighty, efficacious means of ‘cleansing’ our habitat and making it safe and viable.”
The sea, she suggests, is both familiar and strange, and represents a place of reunion, of heart and mind, body and soul, past and future, abandonment and dedication to the meaningful things in our lives. In 1921, after a long separation from the ocean, William Faulkner wrote to his mother:
"Then suddenly, you see it, a blue hill going up and up, beyond the borders of the world, to the salt colored sky, and white whirling necklaces of gulls, and,if you look long enough, a great vague ship, solemnly going somewhere. I can’t express how it makes me feel to see it again, there is a feeling of the utmost inner relief, as if I could close my eyes, knowing that I had found again someone who loved me years and years ago."
It has been a strange summer for us all, and instructive in how weather can affect not only our gardens, but also our psyches. The constant rain of June and July, and the unavailability of the boat, taken to Nova Scotia by our partners, made for an odd compensatory mixture of compulsive work and introspection, a different way of being, provocative, frustrating, sometimes depressing. It was typical to hear grousing and complaint, dour thoughts and dire opinions, from friends and neighbors.
I spent more time reading, for me always a diversion, a dive into the calming waters of narrative, a good story, the odd poem. I had been recommended an ocean book, The Sea Can Wash Away All Evils, by Kimberly C. Patton, a professor of comparative and historical study of religion at the Harvard Divinity School (Columbia University Press, New York, 2007). I was unsure about an academic text with chapter titles like "Ocean as Divinity and Scapegoat," or "The Crisis of Modern Pollution," or "The Purifying Sea in the Religious Imagination." But Professor Patton surprised me with her observations about the sea and the supernatural, the marine rituals of ancient Greece, Hindu submarine fire, and Sedna, the Inuit indwelling spiritual force, or Sea Mother. Part historian, part theologian, part folklorist, part cultural anthropologist, Patton made me think about the ocean again differently, to pause the pursuit of the science or economics or governance of the marine ecosystem, and immerse myself in the psychological swim, the realization and understanding of value in the ocean that is aesthetic, moral, perhaps divine, that has been known, articulated, and expressed ceremonially for all time.
Her text explores the idea of pollution as both the unreflected dumping of waste into the ocean, a kind of senseless vandalism, and as a rejuvenatory element that can cleanse us of despair. “In tons of water,” she writes. “in saltiness, in bottomless depth and endless horizon, and, above all, in the many forms of ceaseless motion, human populations, especially those who live along the littoral, see – and have always seen – in the world’s oceans a mighty, efficacious means of ‘cleansing’ our habitat and making it safe and viable.”
The sea, she suggests, is both familiar and strange, and represents a place of reunion, of heart and mind, body and soul, past and future, abandonment and dedication to the meaningful things in our lives. In 1921, after a long separation from the ocean, William Faulkner wrote to his mother:
"Then suddenly, you see it, a blue hill going up and up, beyond the borders of the world, to the salt colored sky, and white whirling necklaces of gulls, and,if you look long enough, a great vague ship, solemnly going somewhere. I can’t express how it makes me feel to see it again, there is a feeling of the utmost inner relief, as if I could close my eyes, knowing that I had found again someone who loved me years and years ago."
Saturday, July 4, 2009
US Supreme Court and the Ocean
Recently, a NY Times article reported on decisions about environmental matters by the US Supreme Court in its latest session. The article, quoting Richard J. Lazarus of the Supreme Court Institute at the Georgetown University Law Center, pointed to the consistently negative decisions in cases brought by environmental organizations.
What was most interesting was the nature of the cases. The justices allowed the US Navy to test sonar proven to threaten migrating whales, to challenge US Forest Service regulations against dumping mining waste in Alaskan lakes, to limit liability of corporations responsible for toxic spills, and to allow the Environmental Protection Agency to use cost benefit analysis to decide how much marine life may be killed by cooling structures at power plants.
As you might imagine, these decisions were greatly acclaimed by their winners, related interests and corporations, and the US Chamber of Commerce.
Amazingly, every decision resulted in a threat against a healthy ocean. Research has proven the negative impact of certain frequency sonar on whale populations, and lower courts had decided, and were upheld on appeal, that the Navy’s argument based on national security was unjustified. Reversed. Over-ruled. Limiting corporate liability for the perpetrators of toxic spills, most frequently in coastal waters, removes responsibility for the event and delimits adequate resources for clean up, repair and mitigation. Mining waste in lakes may account for the ever-increasing presence of heavy metals in the draining streams and rivers, with continuing detrimental impact through the watershed all the way to the sea. And, finally, anyone who has ever played with an Excel spreadsheet knows how cost-benefit analysis can be adjusted to justify almost anything. Fish vs. power-plants: how do we do the math?
Just how much marine life can be sacrificed to permit a cooling structure for a power plant? How do we calculate the true value of the structure? For example, beyond construction cost do we also include the negative value of the CO2 emitted by that plant and its impact on climate and the world economy? Do we include the energy cost of the oil or coal that has been transported internationally or mined regionally with additional negative environmental expense? And what about the marine life? Is it valued simply as the market cost for useless biomass? Or is it valued for its reproductive potential lost along with the fecundity of the nearby spawning ground? Do we include its value as a source for food or fertilizer or pharmaceuticals? Do we calculate its place in an economic chain of related employment and downstream community viability? To reach the desired conclusion, just re-state the premises to your advantage. This EPA analysis could take forever, lead to a false conclusion, and, probably, provide more work for judges.
Are we prepared to accept that a true calculation might just demonstrate that the value of the marine life is greater than the value of the plant? Will the US Chamber of Commerce accept the outcome of a true cost-benefit analysis based on ecosystem calculations and social cost estimates that demonstrate the power plant is a negative contributor to the economy while the marine life is not?
The Supreme Court, tilted as it apparently is to a conservative, strict constructionist viewpoint, has by these decisions contributed cogently and deliberately to forces that will continue to poison the land and sea. Ironically, these decisions are evidence of just how blind justices can be, and, like the toxins enabled, they serve for life.
What was most interesting was the nature of the cases. The justices allowed the US Navy to test sonar proven to threaten migrating whales, to challenge US Forest Service regulations against dumping mining waste in Alaskan lakes, to limit liability of corporations responsible for toxic spills, and to allow the Environmental Protection Agency to use cost benefit analysis to decide how much marine life may be killed by cooling structures at power plants.
As you might imagine, these decisions were greatly acclaimed by their winners, related interests and corporations, and the US Chamber of Commerce.
Amazingly, every decision resulted in a threat against a healthy ocean. Research has proven the negative impact of certain frequency sonar on whale populations, and lower courts had decided, and were upheld on appeal, that the Navy’s argument based on national security was unjustified. Reversed. Over-ruled. Limiting corporate liability for the perpetrators of toxic spills, most frequently in coastal waters, removes responsibility for the event and delimits adequate resources for clean up, repair and mitigation. Mining waste in lakes may account for the ever-increasing presence of heavy metals in the draining streams and rivers, with continuing detrimental impact through the watershed all the way to the sea. And, finally, anyone who has ever played with an Excel spreadsheet knows how cost-benefit analysis can be adjusted to justify almost anything. Fish vs. power-plants: how do we do the math?
Just how much marine life can be sacrificed to permit a cooling structure for a power plant? How do we calculate the true value of the structure? For example, beyond construction cost do we also include the negative value of the CO2 emitted by that plant and its impact on climate and the world economy? Do we include the energy cost of the oil or coal that has been transported internationally or mined regionally with additional negative environmental expense? And what about the marine life? Is it valued simply as the market cost for useless biomass? Or is it valued for its reproductive potential lost along with the fecundity of the nearby spawning ground? Do we include its value as a source for food or fertilizer or pharmaceuticals? Do we calculate its place in an economic chain of related employment and downstream community viability? To reach the desired conclusion, just re-state the premises to your advantage. This EPA analysis could take forever, lead to a false conclusion, and, probably, provide more work for judges.
Are we prepared to accept that a true calculation might just demonstrate that the value of the marine life is greater than the value of the plant? Will the US Chamber of Commerce accept the outcome of a true cost-benefit analysis based on ecosystem calculations and social cost estimates that demonstrate the power plant is a negative contributor to the economy while the marine life is not?
The Supreme Court, tilted as it apparently is to a conservative, strict constructionist viewpoint, has by these decisions contributed cogently and deliberately to forces that will continue to poison the land and sea. Ironically, these decisions are evidence of just how blind justices can be, and, like the toxins enabled, they serve for life.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
World Ocean Day
June 8 is World Ocean Day, one of those designated moments intended to focus universal consciousness on a particular issue in the press and other media outlets. Depending on the enthusiasm of various organizers, there may be a few articles, a TV spot, some photogenic beach clean-ups and other activities that demonstrate a local interest, however fleeting, in the health of the world ocean.
But why isn’t every day world ocean day? Why is it that we succumb to the illusion that such concentration of effort on an arbitrary date will somehow contribute significantly to the year-round challenge of building public awareness and political will for a sustainable ocean? Isn’t one day just too little, too late to make any difference?
This fallacy is not limited to facile public relations. In international conferences of ocean experts, I hear the constant lament that the best research efforts and the most fervid calls for action fall mostly on deaf ears and that only increased education and global outreach can counter this ignorance and indifference -- and yet these very same observers will admit in the next breath that their organizational budgets and staff for these critical functions are severely under-funded, indeed frequently non-existent. If there is a problem, why do they ignore the most obvious solution? Do they really mean it?
The amount of energy and funds directed toward World Ocean Day is misspent. Those resources would be much better invested in ocean literacy efforts in the schools, or a cooperative program pooling organizational budgets for on-going press briefings on ocean issues, or for advocacy initiatives to promote a national ocean policy in the United States.
World Ocean Day is momentarily useful, but what’s left for the other 364?
But why isn’t every day world ocean day? Why is it that we succumb to the illusion that such concentration of effort on an arbitrary date will somehow contribute significantly to the year-round challenge of building public awareness and political will for a sustainable ocean? Isn’t one day just too little, too late to make any difference?
This fallacy is not limited to facile public relations. In international conferences of ocean experts, I hear the constant lament that the best research efforts and the most fervid calls for action fall mostly on deaf ears and that only increased education and global outreach can counter this ignorance and indifference -- and yet these very same observers will admit in the next breath that their organizational budgets and staff for these critical functions are severely under-funded, indeed frequently non-existent. If there is a problem, why do they ignore the most obvious solution? Do they really mean it?
The amount of energy and funds directed toward World Ocean Day is misspent. Those resources would be much better invested in ocean literacy efforts in the schools, or a cooperative program pooling organizational budgets for on-going press briefings on ocean issues, or for advocacy initiatives to promote a national ocean policy in the United States.
World Ocean Day is momentarily useful, but what’s left for the other 364?
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Fear of Ocean Governance? Why?
The ocean is often described as "the last wilderness" or "a vast commons." It is neither. Civilization has left its mark for centuries in the itineraries of ships, the migration of peoples, the records of trade and exploration, and the interactions of nations. Sea power has served as a major force in the shaping of culture, and competition for the natural resources of the ocean has affected the livelihood of an historic succession of settlement and empire. Today, the challenge of governance faces the ocean with all the complexity and contradiction faced on land. The community of nations has evolved a Law of the Sea, a treaty and legal work-in-progress that begins to address the conflict of proprietary interests in the ocean, the sustainability of valuable food supply and mineral wealth, and the future exploitation of an environment about which we know not enough. Various agreements and admistrative tools have evolved to mitigate conflict, protect national interests, and maintain the natural and cultural values inherent in the global ocean. The need is defined and many suggestions for improved governance and progressive action are in place.
But the United States does not respond with alacrity or substance. Why?
Why should the US Joint Ocean Commission Initiative (comprised of representatives of the two national commissions that examined American ocean policy and made substantial recommendations in 2004) this week give a second year "grade" of C- (up from last year's D+) on progress to date? Reading the reports, the improvements in various categories are subtle at best, nuanced in terms of small, cosmetic first steps and bureaucratic adjustments with no substantial further actions or resources to follow. It would not take much to conclude that almost no advancement has occurred.
Why should the US remain one of the two major ocean nations that has not yet become party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea despite strong public support, Congressional initiatives, and a letter of endorsement from President George W. Bush? Why, with all that, does necessary, meaningful action never quite get taken?
Why should the prospects for H.R 21 The Ocean Conservation, Education and National Security Act (Oceans-21), introduced in the House of Representatives on the first day of the 110th Congress, seem uncertain despite the shift in power resulting from the 2006 mid-term elections?
Why should the announcement of the largest marine protected area in the world (140,00 square miles in the Northwestern Hawaii Islands Marine National Monument) merit such vapid reception by the public, press and ocean conservation movement, seemingly interpreted as little more than a superficial gesture affecting little beyond the livelihood of the few fishers who can no longer fish there?
Why does a nation with the largest ocean Exclusive Economic Zone, with such a huge reliance on the ocean for its economic future, not get beyond the recommendations to assume leadership through exemplary actions, particularly when the financial resources demanded are so relatively small and the capacity to execute is in hand?
I'm perplexed. What is really going on here? I'd be interested in your reasons why?
But the United States does not respond with alacrity or substance. Why?
Why should the US Joint Ocean Commission Initiative (comprised of representatives of the two national commissions that examined American ocean policy and made substantial recommendations in 2004) this week give a second year "grade" of C- (up from last year's D+) on progress to date? Reading the reports, the improvements in various categories are subtle at best, nuanced in terms of small, cosmetic first steps and bureaucratic adjustments with no substantial further actions or resources to follow. It would not take much to conclude that almost no advancement has occurred.
Why should the US remain one of the two major ocean nations that has not yet become party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea despite strong public support, Congressional initiatives, and a letter of endorsement from President George W. Bush? Why, with all that, does necessary, meaningful action never quite get taken?
Why should the prospects for H.R 21 The Ocean Conservation, Education and National Security Act (Oceans-21), introduced in the House of Representatives on the first day of the 110th Congress, seem uncertain despite the shift in power resulting from the 2006 mid-term elections?
Why should the announcement of the largest marine protected area in the world (140,00 square miles in the Northwestern Hawaii Islands Marine National Monument) merit such vapid reception by the public, press and ocean conservation movement, seemingly interpreted as little more than a superficial gesture affecting little beyond the livelihood of the few fishers who can no longer fish there?
Why does a nation with the largest ocean Exclusive Economic Zone, with such a huge reliance on the ocean for its economic future, not get beyond the recommendations to assume leadership through exemplary actions, particularly when the financial resources demanded are so relatively small and the capacity to execute is in hand?
I'm perplexed. What is really going on here? I'd be interested in your reasons why?
Monday, February 19, 2007
Leap of Faith -- Climate Change
I have a friend who is locked in a mortal dialogue with a college roommate about the existence of....global warming.
Forty years ago, when these two were inhabiting a funky House at Harvard, the argument would have been about God. But today it pits them in the 21st century amphitheater, long after the existence of God has been settled, and new questions abound. My friend is a Liberal, excuse me, Progressive, albeit a listening, inquisitive one. The roommate is a Conservative, certain as the day is long. It is a titanic encounter.
On February 5, 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its first major report since 2001 in which it declared that the fact of global warming was "unequivocal" and that human activity in the form of greenhouse gas emissions from powerplants and automobile exhaust was 90-99% likely to be the cause. Certainty was just short of the margin of error. When the report was inserted into the dialogue above, the roommate exploded in a hurricane of denial, alternative papers, contradictory web links, and even more fervid assertions of hoax. As with so much that passes for dialogue in America these days, no exchange of views became possible; civility declined; no evidence could persuade; there was no "ex," and there would be no "change."
So, the evidence of climate change as evinced in sea temperature rise and the relationship of ocean conditions to the genesis of ever more powerful storms was dismissed, just as was all the rest of the distinguished science and consequent analysis in the report. The event was reduced to a concretized heavyweight bout, Improbable vs. Probable, all grunt, no finesse. It was the tenth round; my friend was exhausted in his corner.
The situation called for some last blow, some penultimate move that would put the Conservative down. As second, I reached into my tired bag of tricks, remembered from my own sophomoric arguments of times past (west coast version, more sunshine) and brought out the "What if" rebut, a tactic invented by an old French titan, Blaise "The Wager" Pascal. Regarding the existence of God, it is true that rational evidence is not complete or certain, but "what if" one is wrong? What if there is a God, then one's denial means certain, catastrophic consequence. Like, er, death, damnation and the descent to Hell.
Hell indeed. Fictional renderings of a post-industrial world devastated by the projected impacts of global warming and other ecological betrayals (see the novelist William Gibson, all titles) do not paint a pretty picture (unless your taste in art runs to Pieter Bruegel the Elder or the Japanese hell scrolls). Even the Conservative -- not imagining, but rationally extrapolating the negatives-- might quake at the envisoned circumstances bequeathed to his children. Why risk it? Why take the chance and deny God in the small things, all contrary evidence notwithstanding? Aren't the consequences of such denial just too great?
Does this logic not pertain as well to the question of climate change? How can it be responsible to accept any percentage of improbability when the stakes are so high? How many Katrina's and devastated cities will it take to change the odds? Even if science can provide no absolute certainty, how can we responsibly ignore the verity of study after study, proof after proof? As we have seen so often during the past few years, adherance to ideological positions in the face of contradictory realities has caused terrible pain and devasting consequence. Should the Conservative not pursue Pascal's leap of faith, his affirmation of the unaffirmable as calculated risk? What if he holds fast to his immutable denial and inaction prevails? Are the rest of us prepared to drown in his ideological mistake? Is he?
The ocean plays an essential role in both the problem and solution to climate change. Its sustainability relates directly to the sustainability of climate, just as it does to fresh water, energy, food production and other essential contributions to the future of human survival. We can accept no denials, nor lack of action based on stubborn ideological beliefs. The cause and effect of ocean sustainability are ours to control; we created the conditions and we must change our behavior to redress the damage. There is little time for intellectual niceties; there is too little time for action. Failure to take the leap of faith, to ignore the evidence of critical contamination of the earth's resources, is irresponsible. Failure to take the leap of faith is the best opening for a knock-out punch for us all.
Forty years ago, when these two were inhabiting a funky House at Harvard, the argument would have been about God. But today it pits them in the 21st century amphitheater, long after the existence of God has been settled, and new questions abound. My friend is a Liberal, excuse me, Progressive, albeit a listening, inquisitive one. The roommate is a Conservative, certain as the day is long. It is a titanic encounter.
On February 5, 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its first major report since 2001 in which it declared that the fact of global warming was "unequivocal" and that human activity in the form of greenhouse gas emissions from powerplants and automobile exhaust was 90-99% likely to be the cause. Certainty was just short of the margin of error. When the report was inserted into the dialogue above, the roommate exploded in a hurricane of denial, alternative papers, contradictory web links, and even more fervid assertions of hoax. As with so much that passes for dialogue in America these days, no exchange of views became possible; civility declined; no evidence could persuade; there was no "ex," and there would be no "change."
So, the evidence of climate change as evinced in sea temperature rise and the relationship of ocean conditions to the genesis of ever more powerful storms was dismissed, just as was all the rest of the distinguished science and consequent analysis in the report. The event was reduced to a concretized heavyweight bout, Improbable vs. Probable, all grunt, no finesse. It was the tenth round; my friend was exhausted in his corner.
The situation called for some last blow, some penultimate move that would put the Conservative down. As second, I reached into my tired bag of tricks, remembered from my own sophomoric arguments of times past (west coast version, more sunshine) and brought out the "What if" rebut, a tactic invented by an old French titan, Blaise "The Wager" Pascal. Regarding the existence of God, it is true that rational evidence is not complete or certain, but "what if" one is wrong? What if there is a God, then one's denial means certain, catastrophic consequence. Like, er, death, damnation and the descent to Hell.
Hell indeed. Fictional renderings of a post-industrial world devastated by the projected impacts of global warming and other ecological betrayals (see the novelist William Gibson, all titles) do not paint a pretty picture (unless your taste in art runs to Pieter Bruegel the Elder or the Japanese hell scrolls). Even the Conservative -- not imagining, but rationally extrapolating the negatives-- might quake at the envisoned circumstances bequeathed to his children. Why risk it? Why take the chance and deny God in the small things, all contrary evidence notwithstanding? Aren't the consequences of such denial just too great?
Does this logic not pertain as well to the question of climate change? How can it be responsible to accept any percentage of improbability when the stakes are so high? How many Katrina's and devastated cities will it take to change the odds? Even if science can provide no absolute certainty, how can we responsibly ignore the verity of study after study, proof after proof? As we have seen so often during the past few years, adherance to ideological positions in the face of contradictory realities has caused terrible pain and devasting consequence. Should the Conservative not pursue Pascal's leap of faith, his affirmation of the unaffirmable as calculated risk? What if he holds fast to his immutable denial and inaction prevails? Are the rest of us prepared to drown in his ideological mistake? Is he?
The ocean plays an essential role in both the problem and solution to climate change. Its sustainability relates directly to the sustainability of climate, just as it does to fresh water, energy, food production and other essential contributions to the future of human survival. We can accept no denials, nor lack of action based on stubborn ideological beliefs. The cause and effect of ocean sustainability are ours to control; we created the conditions and we must change our behavior to redress the damage. There is little time for intellectual niceties; there is too little time for action. Failure to take the leap of faith, to ignore the evidence of critical contamination of the earth's resources, is irresponsible. Failure to take the leap of faith is the best opening for a knock-out punch for us all.
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