Global Climate Change
I have no inside knowledge on the climate. Like you, I'm just living in it. So I'll trust what we understand to be scientific consensus. That said, I remember being in school, hearing how the hole in the ozone layer was existential, like our atmosphere was going to slip out of this hole that was growing somewhere over the southern hemisphere. It was basically the proto Climate Change story.
Now, headlines tell of the Ozone's trajectory of restoration to robust health. Taking this lesson to heart, in the current climate, I think people risk investing too much in the prevailing popular scientific narratives about human impact on the climate systems, whatever that impact may be (global warming, cooling, or unpredictable changes, certain harmful emissions, etc.), and thus risk being caught off balance if/when the scientific consensus shifts.
Any day now, someone could invent a climate-restorative technology, or something that makes burning fossil fuels obsolete. These may not look likely considering the evidence. I am not going to question scientists with a good argument that human activity is changing the climate patterns. Still, it seems true that science suggests the climate changes over time on its own, sometimes drastically. It’s actually easy to see why the “debate” is intractable.
As I see it, the key question is: if we are harming out environment, what are we doing about it?
First, the money, brains, research, development, and technological prowess should go entirely toward mitigation of the harmful effects, not into research that shows it's happening. Things like making human communities and infrastructure and lifestyles resilient to the coming changes. Some persuasion efforts may be worthwhile, but even that seems feels like too little too late. The debate over "whether it's happening" is frozen solid, heels dug in. If people are convinced that the threat is what they allege it to be, they should just proceed accordingly, in the face of skepticism from other segments of the population.
Second, regarding the health of the Earth's environment and ecosystems, with a focus on human societies, I would say the goal should be these simple priorities:
- Don't Pollute
- reduce, reuse, recycle
- less waste
- better waste management systems/processes
- cleaner emissions
- factories
- power generation
- transportation systems
- clean up pollution
- Protect Natural Resources
- consume less
- use longer-life products
- repair things
- save water
- safe drinking water is a related political issue
- preservation
- wild spaces
- precious resources
- mining/extraction
- oil
- minerals
- etc.
- Sustainable Operations
- respect for all living things
- don't leave it worse than you found it
- if it's not broken, don't fix it
Humans should not try to reverse-engineer the climate changes using geological methods and experiments on complex systems like the climate and ecology. For these foolhardy attempts to change the composition of the atmosphere or directly nudge the Earth's temperatures, there is no law or regulation on point that we must heed as much as the law of unintended consequences. The cover up is always worse than the crime. People should confront the first-order effects of climate change with reasonable strategies and foresight.
By the way, George Carlin pointed out that Earth isn't facing a crisis. We are. The Earth is going to be fine. Following mass extinctions, the life on Earth regenerates. It is the human habitats that may end up getting fried.