Field Notes from a Catastrophe

“[…] between the 1960s and the 1990s, sea ice depth in a large section of the Arctic Ocean declined by nearly forty percent.” 

Detractors of climate change action often claim that evidence of global warming is somehow deceptive or not representative of the whole picture. Indeed, Kolbert assents that even among scientists there is a lack of consensus on climate change. However, she shows in this book that there is scientific consensus that climate change is both real and rapid. Statistics such as this one suggest that the problem humans have with tackling climate change is not a lack of knowledge, ingenuity, nor simply economically motivated, but an affective inability to accept responsibility for our collective environmental impact. 

“The more open water that is exposed, the more solar energy goes into heating the ocean.” 

In this book, Kolbert draws her readers’ attention to several complexities of climate change. One such, discussed in Chapter 1, is the ice-albedo feedback, which is one of the reasons why the arctic is warming so rapidly. Thus, it is not simply that Arctic ice is melting, raising sea levels and releasing greenhouse gases. Collapsing glaciers have a cumulative impact on global warming, suggesting that as Kolbert argues, we are likely approaching a “critical threshold” (3). 

“Over the past two million years, huge ice sheets have advanced across the northern hemisphere and retreated again more than twenty times.” 

One of the biggest critiques of climate change action is the historical variability of the planet’s climate. Kolbert addresses this at several points in her book, contextualizing our current global warming within the frame of human history. The Earth will be as warm, if present trends continue, as it was during the Eocene period. Thus, the temperature vacillations responsible for the fall of civilizations and extinction of species should make us less, not more complacent about our contribution to global warming. 

“This is the energy engine for the world climate.” 

Konrad Steffen, professor of geography at the University of Colorado describes thermohaline circulation in Chapter 3. This “engine” is also known as the oceanic “conveyor belt” via which water and weather systems move around the planet. Kolbert shows that the melting glaciers are likely to cause current patterns to shift, resulting in extreme changes in weather patterns. This is especially likely in places like Great Britain, where the climate currently benefits substantially from the warming influence of the Gulf Stream.

“In the mid-eighteenth century, it has been estimated, nearly a third of [Iceland’s] population died of starvation or associated cold related ills.” 

Scandinavian countries are perhaps more aware of climate change than other nations due to their northerly location, and history such as Iceland’s relatively recent famine. For the inhabitants of locations closer to the poles and the equator, the influence of the natural world is perhaps less more appreciable than in temperate climates. Kolbert shows how even in developed countries, in recent history, climate change can have devastating consequences for exposed populations.

“As the warmth returned, the Arctic forms would retreat northward.” 

Kolbert cites the famous biologist Charles Darwin, who in On the Origin of Species describes species migrations in response to the movements of glaciers. Not only can humans be displaced from their homes as a consequence of climate change, as they are being in Greenland, but animal and insect populations too are subject to eviction. As her book progresses, Kolbert draws an increasingly convincing picture of the destabilization induced by climate change.

“Part of it is simply that we’ve got one planet, and we are heading in the direction that, quite fundamentally, we don’t know what the consequences are going to be.”

Lepidopterist Chris Thomas of the University of York offers a different perspective on global warming. For Thomas, the issue comes down to unpredictability. His studies have traced the migration of biological species steadily northward, potentially disrupting the delicate balance of ecosystems. Thomas hypothesizes that it may not be drought or flooding that impact us, but rather our ability to grow sufficient crops to feed our growing populations. 

“I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that by 2100 most things were destroyed. That’s sort of an extreme view.” 

David Rind, GISS climate scientist, has one of the bleakest outlooks on climate change cited in Kolbert’s book. His suggestion is that climate change is likely to destabilize global political systems, and could provoke conflict. Though technology has brought vast advantages, it may also be weaponized, and could be potentially devastating should conflict erupt. Although this is an especially pessimistic view, all these factors are primed with the potential for destruction.

“There are several reasons why global warming produces flooding.” 

Flooding is another cumulative consequence of climate change. Warm water expands, which raising sea levels, while changing precipitation patterns can adversely affect at risk populations and infrastructure. In her chapter on floating houses in the Netherlands, Kolbert records Dutch jokes about the lengths the country goes to prevent inundation. These Ark-like abodes may seem dystopian, yet low-lying Holland is already testing the floating house solution.

“A study commissioned a few years ago by the British government concluded that under certain conditions, floods of magnitude now expected no more often than once a century could, by 2080, be occurring in England once every three years.” 

Islands are especially at risk of flooding. Whether it be the small island of Greenland where Kolbert begins her story, or the British Isles, Global warming could have disastrous effects for those living near the waterline. Kolbert points out that many of the most populous places in the world are located on the banks of rivers. The River Ganges supports one of the largest populations in the world, and rivers flow through numerous European capital cities. Displacement of these populations would cause huge disruption at great expense.

“Current CO2 levels are unprecedented in recent geological history. (the previous high, of 299 ppm, was reached around 325,000 years ago).” 

Though over the millennia the earth’s climate has vacillated wildly, Kolbert points out that carbon dioxide levels are the highest they have been in human history. The climate-related disruptions to our ancestors are likely to be eclipsed by the scale of devastation provoked by our now dominant anthropogenic “forcing.” The very technology that distinguishes us from earlier civilizations may also incite our biggest threat.

“In the Eocene, crocodiles roamed Colorado and sea levels were nearly 300 feet higher than they are today.” 

The Eocene period is so temporally distinct from our own that it can even seem surreal. Yet Kolbert confronts her reader with a strange reality: we are approaching similar climate conditions to those Coloradoan crocodiles. The reader’s response maybe one of cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, we may be shocked into taking action to evade climate disaster, yet on the other we may be paralyzed by this shock, or respond with avoidance or denial as in polyvagal theory.

“It’s true that we’ve had higher CO2 levels before. But, then, of course, we also had dinosaurs.” 

Dutch water ministry official Eelke Turkstra may be joking when he references the dinosaurs, but the connection with the famously extinct former inhabitants of our Earth is as ominous a reference as the early link Kolbert draws between icebergs and the Titanic in Chapter 1. The surprising mention of dinosaurs is one example of a device Kolbert employs repeatedly in the book. By surprising and sometimes alarming her reader, she engages them affectively.

“The largest single source of carbon emissions in the United States is electricity production, at 39%, followed by transportation, at 32%.” 

These statistics are indicative of the major inhibitors to curbing American emissions. The national economy is of course supported by electricity generation, while the scale of the country necessitates heavy reliance on automobiles. The American car, symbol of progress and American manufacturing, has been overtaken as the dominant economic metaphor by technology companies. Hindering progress would be detrimental, yet, Kolbert suggests, advancement and economic solvency must be weighed against the unpriced externality of carbon emissions. 

“In the future, the growth of carbon emissions is likely to be determined by several forces. One is the rate of population growth […] Another is economic growth. A third factor is the rate at which new technologies are adopted.” 

As Kolbert and many detractors of climate change action note, projections for the future of carbon emissions vary. For instance, Kolbert recounts how Carbon Mitigation Initiative Director Robert Socolow has calculated numerous “wedges” to mitigate environmental damage, while NYU physics professor Marty Hoffert considers that recarbonization is likely due to the plenitude of coal in industrializing nations like India and China. Hoffert also makes a key distinction between curbing emissions and finding new, sustainable sources of clean energy (144).

“Slavery also had some of those characteristics 150 years ago […] then something happened and all of a sudden it was wrong and we didn’t do it any more. And there were social costs to that.” 

Offering an optimistic perspective on efforts to keep CO2 levels below 500 ppm, Socolow draws on a memorable example of a major social change in American history. Yet the problems with this example are conspicuous. Some social scientists argue that slavery continues in all but name through the private prison system and cheap labor from abroad. Historians also point out that abolitionism was driven as much by economic as ethical untenability. This implies that charitable motivations alone do not produce systemic change. As Kolbert suggests, an economic mechanism, such as a carbon tax or credit system, is more likely to drive private sector engagement. America’s resistance to the system prescribed by the Kyoto Protocol protects the nation’s economy but exacerbates climate change risks (139; 155). 

“In legitimate scientific circles, it is virtually impossible to find evidence of disagreement over the fundamentals of global warming.” 

If Kolbert’s book were to have a single message, this sentence might be it. Kolbert extensively explores the scientific research into global warming to redress denial of climate change. Specifically, Kolbert’s book pivots on the American government’s refusal to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol due to what pollster Frank Luntz termed in a memo to congress “voters [belief] that there is no consensus about global warming in the scientific community” (163). Kolbert’s book refutes this claim.

“Continuing growth in greenhouse gas emissions is likely to lead to an annual average warming over the United States that could be as much as several degrees Celsius during the 21st-century.” 

President Bush dismissed the Environmental Protection Agency report from which this was taken as being “put out by the bureaucracy” (164). One of the most alarming implications of Kolbert’s book is the idea that the American government ignored scientific consensus because it would conflict with America’s economic ambitions.

“We are a country that emits nearly 25% of the world’s greenhouse gases.” 

At the time of the book going to press, America was responsible for a quarter of the contributions to climate change. This represents a vast weight of responsibility. America sets a precedent for the rest of the world, yet its international influence is driven by a capitalist economy reliant upon carbon-emitting energy sources. 

“China is industrializing according to a model set in the United States forty or fifty years ago.” 

While it is an attractive solution to shift the weight of responsibility for climate change onto economic competitors like China, David Hawkins of the NRDC points out the reciprocity between American precedent and the actions of other major world economies. 

“Most of the warming observed over the last fifty years is attributable to human activities.” 

In defining the Anthropocene age, Kolbert cites a 2001 IPCC Report. By concluding her book with this concept, Kolbert lays the burden of responsibility for climate change once more at the door of humanity—specifically at the doors of developed and industrializing nations, and especially at those of Americans, whose influence, Kolbert argues, may have a deciding impact on the outcomes of the world’s warming climate.

“Just to slow the growth […] is a hugely ambitious undertaking, one that route would require new patterns of consumption, new technologies, and new politics.” 

Kolbert’s reckoning with the realities of climate change and the present plans to solve them resists the tendency to deny or minimize them (164). The scale of the climate change problem is one of the most crucial factors in its perpetuation, through what Kolbert calls “dangerous anthropogenic interference” (184). Yet in parsing out the problem, Kolbert’s emphasis is on the “new,” and thus on inspiring her reader.

“Whether the threshold for dangerous anthropogenic interference is 450 ppm of CO2 or 500, or even 550 or 600, the world is rapidly approaching the point at which, for all practical purposes, the crossing of that threshold will become impossible to prevent.” 

Kolbert’s alarming assertion, delivered after her lengthy expositions of scientific studies and debate, corroborates her title. What Kolbert is describing is an almost inevitable catastrophe. She argues that due to the lag before climate change effects are seen, the implications of today’s warm temperatures are not yet in effect.