As an admirer of Jared Diamond’s work in Guns Germs and Steel, and in most of Collapse, I was looking forward with anticipation to his analysis of possible responses to global warming by those who are extremely worried about its effects. However, even though throughout the book he insists there are reasons for hope, I waited in vain for something beyond this kind of line:

• We, at this stage in history, can learn from the past
• We have the technical means and the systems knowledge to solve today’s ecological problems
• We can choose not to fail, especially if we re-evaluate core values (for instance, consumerism)

Ok, fine. But what do these “choices” really come down to? Um… he lists:

• Vote
• Pressure companies, especially ones with big public relations investments
• Talk to everyone you know
• Buy with an ecological mindset
• Work on a local level to improve things

There is something both true and stupifyingly lame about these suggestions. People who understand the situation we’re in should do these as the very early beginning of a response. They are more or less the same things which Al Gore discusses in “An Inconvenient Truth.” They’re just the tip of a melting iceberg, and they don’t even truly re-evaluate the main cultural value which has gotten us into this situation: consumerism. Diamond’s suggestions come down to this: We’ll make great consumer choices (I consider voting a consumer choice, in large part), and get ourselves out of this. Oh, really?

What no one seems to admit is: making any progress on global warming will take massive sacrifice on the part of everyone. And given that most people have the money to avoid that sacrifice, politically it will need to be — what’s the word — required? demanded? rationed? forced? And these collective sacrifices (and the nastiness it will take to limit consumption and lower corporate profits) still might not work. We, as a world economy and culture, will need to simply stop doing carbon non-neutral things. That means: Not drive. Not fly. Burn as little coal, diesel, and wood as possible. Purchase much less. Buy food which takes less carbon to produce. Use far less electricity. Be extremely conscious of the carbon positivity or negativity of a huge range of products and practices (for instance, computers, houses, roads, books, cans) and ruthlessly avoid those activities which use anything more than the very least possible carbon. For a nice discussion of this issue, see What Al Gore Hasn’t Told You.

Isn’t it obvious how much of a problem for the international capital markets this would be? How an economy built on consumption can’t do anything but think it can consume its way out of the problem? How the entrenched interests of society, old and new money, industrial and cyber economies, as well as everyone’s habits (in the first world) and most everyone’s inclinations (elsewhere) point towards not sacrificing? Is it reasonable to ask what kind of political will could act with such decisiveness? Or whether such a political will could exist, or could arise from millions of loosely connected consumers?

I recommend Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe to anyone who cares to read it. Pick up the paperback edition, which has an Afterword not contained in the first hardback edition.

After going through published warnings from the 1990’s and early 2000’s about what a serious hurricane might do to New Orleans, Kolbert ends the Afterword on this note:

All of the studies and news stories were there for everyone to read. But the storm of the future lay in the future, while the costs of preparing for it would have had to be borne in the present. It was easier, both psychically and economically, to turn away from the facts. And so life went on as before, and everyone hoped for the best. (p.199)

Ah, the best. A flooded, devastated Gulf Coast. Similarly: the warming of the future lay in the future.