Embracing Climate Change: The Only Solution Left?

Humanity’s efforts to curb climate change amount to too little, too late.

Climatologists are increasingly sounding this fatalistic message. Many experts say policymakers must cut global CO2 emissions in half within the next 50 years to avoid a climatic tipping point, while others contend we have already passed that fateful point. A full two years ago now, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a sobering study stating the inevitability of climate change and its devastating impact on the world’s ecosystems. The study even suggested human efforts should transition from solely preventing climate change to also devising vital adaptations to preserve human life on a planet with unpredictable climate patterns.

One of my good friends, a veteran climate change advocate who works closely with the hard facts, recently announced she suffers from “climate depression.” And she is certainly not alone. This raises a question: How can people stay optimistic in the face of apocalyptic predictions? One might strive to preserve a sense of “apocalyptic optimism,” as environmental journalist and author Fred Pearce has claimed to do, finding promise in the Obama administration’s progressive goals to curb American CO2 emissions.

Yet another coping mechanism may be to embrace the impending changes to our global climate as the natural course of events. Many people will no doubt bristle at the thought, arguing that such a suggestion denies human responsibility for the climate changes being wrought; I am inclined to feel the same. Yet for the sake of a thought-provoking discussion, allow me to explain the possible pillars of an “embrace climate change” philosophy:

1. Humans are part of the natural world. People have argued for hundreds of years now that human activities like burning fossil fuels, manufacturing chemicals and clear-cutting forests go against the laws of nature, yet if human beings are a species that evolved naturally, all of our activities must also be a natural progression of evolution. The great exponential swell in our global human population, fed by fossil fuels and the expansion they have enabled, is no different than an ant colony that grows and thrives in an area where food is abundant, only to collapse as soon as the food source is depleted.
2. Change is the only constant. Modern humans have enjoyed an unusually calm climate during the last 10,000 years, but quick and violent climate changes have been the norm for much of the planet’s history, argues Fred Pearce, who recently penned a book titled “With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change.” As we perceive the approach of rapid climate alterations, humans are scrambling to stave off change and preserve the peaceful climate our species has always known. Perhaps our inability to accept change, then, is simply the tale of a species so new to the planet that it doesn’t yet realize the long-term ways of the world.
3. Human fossil fuel burning may be a natural part of carbon’s life cycle. Burning fossil fuels and releasing the tons of CO2 that have been trapped underground for ages will facilitate the earth’s next climatic stage – could it be inevitable that some force (be it humans, another species, volcanic eruptions, etc.) would eventually cause the release of this sequestered carbon? The consequences of our fossil fuel addiction may seem detrimental to us now within our narrow temporal perspective on this earth, but human-caused climate changes may prove in the long term to usher in a new and even more advanced phase of life’s evolution.

A Brighter Future?

The devastation of a natural forest fire isn’t pretty, but the ensuing regeneration of an even healthier forest is a beneficial long term result. In fact, many forest ecosystems rely on fires to cleanse the forest of accumulating dead matter and recycle those nutrients into the soil. Similarly, the planet isn’t equipped to forever maintain billions of humans in symbiosis with other ecosystems, and so perhaps we must view our fossil fuel era with its ballooning human population as a phase leading up to the “forest fire” of climate change, after which an even healthier world will emerge.

If our actions naturally shift the climate and correct our human population to more sustainable levels, the changes may create endless new possibilities for future advancements: the development of higher intelligence in humans, the evolution of new species that allow humans to flourish in unimaginable and more sustainable ways, or miracles of evolution that no human can yet imagine. The climate changes that caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs were tragically unfortunate for the planet’s life at the time, yet those events set the stage for human beings to evolve. The imminent changes we face today, however difficult, may in turn be setting the stage for amazing new stages of life on earth.

Adopting an “embrace climate change” philosophy would mean we must relinquish our foolish dreams of finding new technologies that will allow us to maintain our current over-consumptive life styles unabated. Rather, we would need to start thinking of our species’ long term survival and seeking technologies and modes of living that will accommodate a more climatically turbulent and unpredictable world. If we truly embraced this mode of thought and acted accordingly, we would actually be making great strides toward reduced CO2 emissions in the process – and that’s something everyone can get behind.

What Do You Think?

Is climate change inevitable? Do we still have time to reverse course? Are changes to the earth’s climate and species a natural process that humans should accept, or do we have an obligation and responsibility to mitigate our own species’ negative impact on the planet?

– Jennifer Colletti