No, the New Mexico official told me, you’re getting too far ahead of the science. Your certainty about the consequences of climate change, he cautioned me, isn’t warranted. You’ll hurt your credibility.
This official deals with water issues for our state. He was gracious enough to provide feedback on a paper I’d written in my capacity as a law student at the University of New Mexico. The paper dealt with how the state’s prior appropriation system of water law manages water shortages during drought. In writing about that subject, I had emphasized that the state faced a future of, in essence, permanent drought, and had best prepare accordingly. I based this statement on, for 1example, a 2008 report on climate change by the U.S. Geological Survey, which said of climate change models: “In the Southwest, for example, the models project a permanent drying by the mid-21st century that reaches the level of aridity seen in historical droughts (pp. 150-51).”
The New Mexico state water official disagreed. I’m not suggesting, he said, that you back away from climate change. But I do think some of your assertions outstrip the confidence of current predictions.
Maybe he had a point, I thought later. “Permanent drying” and aridity are not necessarily the same as permanent drought. The recently released National Climate Assessment, for example, emphasizes a future for the Southwest of permanent, dramatic temperature increases. The assessment doesn’t say drought will become permanent; it says that more heat will make droughts more frequent and severe, as soil moisture, snowpack and stream flow decrease. Precipitation may or may not decrease as well; the science on this point is more uncertain. But the general trend is clear: droughts will happen more often, and they will be worse. James Hansen has characterized this future as “semi-permanent drought.”
The state official who read my paper certainly didn’t think we should take comfort in such fine linguistic and conceptual distinctions. He was giving me advice on how to be taken seriously, not trying to poo-poo the impact of climate change. It’s going to be a huge challenge, he admitted.
His view, it seems, is not yet a consensus. A different state official, one who also deals with water, warned me against using the phrase “climate change.” This official suggested “water shortage management” instead, because “climate change” is too polarizing, too politicized. Using it, in this view, sacrifices credibility with too many water stakeholders in agriculture, industry, government, and elsewhere.
In other words, crucial institutions in New Mexico have yet to truly face what is no longer beyond reasonable doubt, whatever certain members of the political establishment and media may assert. The recent National Climate Assessment lays out science accepted by institutions that are among the most conservative in American life. These include the United States armed forces, now actively preparing for military crises triggered by climate driven famine, drought, and economic collapse. The military is also planning for weapons and infrastructure freed from fossil fuel dependence, anticipating the day when such fuels are unusable, whether through natural shortages or emergency greenhouse gas reductions. The same foresight emerges in U.S. intelligence forecasts, which see climate change reshaping international affairs through resource depletion, war and mass migration over the next twenty years.
This is the time span for long-term strategic planning, not only in government but also business and finance. The global insurance industry, for example, is preparing for escalating costs of climate-related disasters, based on data showing drastically increased weather damage over the last thirty years. Likewise, the World Bank issues reports and organizes conferences warning that climate change threatens the global economic growth sustained across the world since the end of the Second World War. That’s why major global corporations support global action on climate change, including General Electric, Alcoa, DuPont, and Intel.
Even Exxon, notorious for funding denial of anthropogenic climate change, supports a carbon tax as a response to climate change. Yes, it’s true. Just visit the company’s climate policy web page. Whatever Exxon’s qualms about the impact of carbon regulation on its profits, whatever its funding of pro-denial politicians, the company seems to know which way the global wind is blowing.
None of these corporate and national security institutions are known for their leftist sympathies. To suggest that any of them have been duped by liberal scaremongering is ludicrous.
So what’s preventing New Mexico, a state heavily dependent on corporate and defense dollars, from accepting what global business and the military know to be true? A big part of the answer is easy. Yet another New Mexico official once told a group of law students at UNM: if you’re against oil and gas in this state, you’re condemning our kids. Because their schools can’t survive without the public revenue that oil and gas drilling provide. He might have mentioned the jobs dependent on coal as well.
All of which is true enough. Today.
It’s also a recipe for long-term disaster. The military and economic institutions that shape the future of this planet are gearing up for a post fossil fuel era, because they know these fuels are wrecking the planet on which they do business. That means the future is pre-determined. Fossil fuels are going away, because the powers behind the throne won’t let them stay. Even more than the science, this is what has settled the issue of whether climate change is real and what is to be done.
The lesson for New Mexico is clear. If our state bets the future on fossil fuels, we’re finished. Yes, the transition away from them will be hard. Figuring out how best to generate energy, jobs, and revenue from solar, wind, and other renewables will be hard. So will figuring out how to help the people who work in power plants, mines, and drilling fields dependent on coal, oil, and natural gas.
But it has to be done. If left and right have to fight, in New Mexico or anywhere else, let it be over how.
(Photo by Bert Kaufmann)
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