March 16, 2006

Interview by ADAM HYLA
Editor

The earth is warming. The effects will be — perhaps already are — catastrophic. Because the change is so gradual, it’s more dangerous. Only massive global cooperation will make a difference.

That’s the clear-headed but alarming message of Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (Bloomsbury Publishing, $22.95). Collected from a three-part series in The New Yorker, the book relates her talks with scientists who have forecasted the droughts and floods that will ensue as temperatures rise. She spoke with paleoclimatologists who have found that the last 10,000 years of relative stability — in which homo sapiens settled down and invented writing and farming — have been the exception, not the rule. Weather fluctuations helped annihilate other civilizations, they say — but what differentiates us from the Maya is that we know what’s going on. It’s no comfort that the burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests is spurring nature’s changes along. The question is, can we react in time?

Here there is hope: led by Seattle mayor Greg Nickels, 204 U.S. cities representing 36 million Americans have bucked the White House and signed on to the Kyoto pledge to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. That’s a good start. Engineering professor Robert Socolow has shown that seven massive conservation measures — just one of them being a wind farm the size of New York state — would stabilize global emissions. What’s needed to make it all happen is another Manhattan Project, he told Kolbert: “Whether it’s practical depends on how much we give a damn.”

Kolbert visits Seattle to read from her book on March 23. She spoke with Real Change beforehand by phone from her home in Williamstown, Mass.

Real Change: Your book went to press about the time that Hurricane Katrina hit. Rising sea temperatures are taken to mean stronger hurricanes. Was global warming the culprit in Katrina?

Elizabeth Kolbert: Well, I want to emphasize that I never claim particular expertise; I’m a journalist and I rely on the people doing the research. But two very compelling studies came out recently that assessed hurricane data from all oceans worldwide. You are seeing that there is an increase in very strong storms, and that the total number of these is increasing. Models did suggest that we would see this. We could have had Katrina without global warming; all the [scientists] say is that Katrina is consistent with global warming. What’s more important is that we have had so many storms of such size.

RC: Has the science of climate change and sea temperatures been adequately discussed in the media?

Kolbert: I think people who have really looked at the data, disinterested observers, say that the data is very compelling. I think that we’re seeing a shift. Does it get coverage in the heat of the moment? Probably not. Now we’re coming into another hurricane season, so we’ll have to see what happens.

RC: If you take the fact that such events hurt the poor and disadvantaged more, what does that say about the future of climate change?

Kolbert: There’s a general consensus that if you’re living on the edge, you’re going to be pushed over that much more easily. That goes for any element of climate change: rainfall, flooding, food production — any of the ramifications of climate change will be presumably felt first and hardest by the people who are the most vulnerable.

At the same time, I think that it would be foolish for anyone leading a comfortable middle-class life to think that they were immune. Looking down the road at what’s possible, the potential ramifications are very destabilizing.

RC: Yet there is this kind of lag effect with global warming: the changes that can’t be seen lag behind the changes that have been set in motion.

Kolbert: People compare the climate to a battleship, and it’s moving with an incredible amount of inertia, and we are now seeing — for example, the oceans have to heat up for the air to heat up, until you reach equilibrium.

Things take time to work their way through the system, so that what we’re feeling now is what our parents set in motion, and what we’re setting in motion now our kids will live with. That to me is the most interesting, that these things are accumulative. Once you put the carbon [into the atmosphere], it basically lasts a century. You are locking that in, not creating the warming you’ve already seen. You have already made the commitment that would determine the climate for our kids — and you know, we’re working on our grandkids.

RC: I was really, profoundly affected by the point I think you’re making in the conclusion of your book, which is about how we as humanity respond to the need of our fellows. With a globe of more than six billion people, when weather patterns change and crisis occur, millions of people will be affected. You’re trying to say are we going to be a supportive community or are we going to sort of build walls around the poorer areas.

Kolbert: I think that’s a very open question in our behavior so far.

RC: I guess that was more of a share than a question. But my next question is kind of similar: How has the prospect of climate change altered environmentalism? Climate change is something that clearly no longer has ramifications strictly for something separate from us called our ecology; this is about our survival.

Kolbert: Absolutely. I think there’s the possibility for a lot of alliances to be made. You see people like [conservative NY Times columnist] Thomas Friedman hitting on this every other day. There are so many reasons why we have to change the way we consume energy. I think there are people coming at it from a political perspective and a fiscal perspective and from an environmental perspective, and you can really only pray, basically, that something actually gets done. I live in a little liberal Massachusetts town, but everyone is really on board and serious about what to do. So that is the one thing that gives me hope.

RC: It’s interesting to think about your insightful statement that it’s almost as hard to look at this without despair, as it is to deny that it’s happening.

Kolbert: I think that that’s the kind of tightrope people walk when they talk about this issue. One of my own personal views is that things are very dangerous, but we have to try and do something. Al Gore has his line he uses: we can’t go straight from denial to despair. That’s a real danger. The more you understand about how the climate works, the more you think, Wow, this is such a huge problem. And we’re so deep into it — way deeper than we realize. I wonder what the world is going to look like 60 years from now. On the other hand, I’m thinking that we don’t have any choice but to act.

RC: What do you find more frequently, more despair or more denial?

Kolbert: Just anecdotally, we’ve had a ridiculously warm winter here. I’m looking out the window right now at Vermont’s highest mountain and there’s little snow on it. I think people are freaked out about that. And the temperatures are consistent with global warming.

I think people are starting to raise the question, Well, what do I do? There are a lot of things you can do personally. But realistically, way more has to be done on a national and a global level. Your putting in that fluorescent bulb is good, but it’s only a start.

In the last 30 years or so, the time in American history that we’ve known about global warming, what have we done? We’ve invented SUVs and 4,000 square foot homes and exurbia: all these things that are absolutely energy intensive.

RC: You say that everything the U.S. could do would be offset by China’s industrialization as it continues.

Kolbert: I don’t mean to suggest that we shouldn’t do things because [China will offset our efforts]; I had to be honest about it but perhaps I was too honest about it. But we hold a huge responsibility. We could just throw up our hands — but you have to do something and then hope that others will follow.

RC: You know the Seattle mayor has been a leader in getting the mayors of U.S. cities signed on to the Kyoto Protocol —

Kolbert: — absolutely, and he gets a lot of credit for that. The one thing that I have to say about that effort is that now you have to do something. You can’t sign on without really getting serious. It’s not clear yet whether all the U.S. cities that have signed on are going to live up to their commitment. n

[Event]

Elizabeth Kolbert talks about Field Notes from a Catastrophe on Thursday, March 23, at 7:30 p.m., at Town Hall, Eighth and Seneca St. in Seattle. Tickets are $5 at the door only.