Who Talks About Polar Bears Anymore?
I’m not sure what climate change debate Alexis Madrigal has been paying attention to the last few years, but he sounds like Rip Van Winkle here:
I’ve been kicking around an idea recently that crystallized in the form of a short “Room for Debate” op-ed on green jobs that I wrote for The New York Times yesterday. Here’s the relevant snip:
The president should remind people that stopping global warming isn’t about nature or “saving the planet.” Some set of plants and animals will survive. Human infrastructure is what’s in danger. We’ve built cities predicated on one climate and now those places have a new one. Climactic chaos is expensive.
The nugget of the argument here is the framing fighting climate change as a way to help nature is flawed.
Huh? What leading spokesperson, scientist or politician says that we have to save nature from global warming? Did you hear that during the Congressional cap & trade debate, or at the Copenhagen climate talks?
Yes, there is ongoing research (and plenty of media stories) that investigates climate change impacts to ecosystems and wildlife. It is part of the larger conversation.
But these days influential pundits and scientists mostly argue that we have to save ourselves from global warming. I’m not suggesting that this is winning the day any more than a plea for polar bears is. I just don’t see cuddly animals or nature, per se, as a main component of the public climate debate–at least not any longer.
But the message was supposed to be that climate change was bad for everything, wasn’t it?
Some people will never stop talking about polar bears as they are still the AGW poster child:
“The chief threat to the polar bear is the loss of its sea ice habitat due to global warming. As suggested by its specific scientific name (Ursus maritimus), the polar bear is actually a marine mammal that spends far more time at sea than it does on land. It is on the Arctic ice that the polar bear makes its living, which is why global warming is such a serious threat to its well-being.”
http://www.nwf.org/Global-Warming/Effects-on-Wildlife-and-Habitat/Polar-Bears.aspx
Some people will keep talking about ‘saving humanity from AGW’ too. I’m guessing they will come up with still more ‘threats’ to see if anything can catch on. In any case, crying wolf has already had its inevitable effect, and now fewer and fewer people take it seriously no matter how AGW is packaged or presented.
I simply don’t see any way that Humpty IPCC et al can possibly be repaired and, after what they have done, nor do I see any reason to.
Q: “What leading spokesperson, scientist or politician says that we have to save nature from blobal warming?”
A: Nearly all of them Keith
How do you differentiate infrastructure from the base of environmental and ecological services that support such infrastructure?
The degradation of basic natural services entails more infrastructure and energy costs to ameliorate such losses — turning up the heat to compensate for an overheated situation. Which sadly is the direction we are headed. And points, also sadly, at a failure of environmental education or a willful effort to reduce its catch via muddling the issues and monkey wrenching the debate.