Image: 20th Century Fox

Dances With Wolves in Space?
I haven’t seen James Cameron’s Avatar yet, but after reading many of the reviews that came out yesterday, it’s pretty obvious that the movie has an important green theme. Warning: This post will include no spoilers except for what is revealed in the theatrical trailer and in the average review (for more reviews, see links below). But before we get to the green angle, a bit of background: Avatar is a science-fiction epic that was made using cutting edge technology (a lot of it is computer generated). The story takes place in 2154 on an exomoon called Pandora (Discovery has a good article about exomoons) where humans have discovered very valuable natural resources. But before they can extract them, they first have to deal with the native Na’vi humanoid aliens, and this leads to conflict. So far it sounds like the classic storyline of industrial greed vs. traditional harmonious lifestyle. But there’s an important point to make as we translate this lesson from fiction to reality.

Image: 20th Century Fox

Let’s Not Generalize From Fiction
In most fiction, it makes for a better narrative to have a clear antagonist, some enemy or external force to oppose the main characters. We’ve been trained almost from birth to find someone to blame when something goes wrong, which might explain why a lot of people aren’t very good with situation where everybody’s or nobody’s is to blame (gray areas).

But in the real world, things aren’t so clear cut with most of the current environmental problems we face. Take oil companies for example. Many consider them villains of the first order – and indeed many of them are doing unethical things (ie. Exxon funding biased studies to confuse the public) – but fundamentally, the reason why those companies are producing 80-something million barrels of oil each day is because most people have cars and drive around, and buy products that have been shipped from far away, etc. Oil companies don’t burn all that oil by themselves, we do. We’re paying them for it, creating the demand.

I’m not saying that we should live like the Na’vi in Avatar or the Native Americans in Dances with Wolves. I’d much prefer for us to find ways to keep most of the benefits of an energy-rich society (and those benefits are numerous, including bringing hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty) while fixing the problems. But to do that, we must be a lot more pro-active and actually work on solutions. Apathy is not neutral, it is part of the problem.

Not So Simple
Unlike in Avatar, there isn’t an external enemy that comes in and tries to ruin everything. All of us are deeply entangled in a system that produces a mix of good and bad outcomes, and we are all partly responsible for both. What we must do is maximize the good and minimize the bad.

The short version: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” At least until we decide to be part of the solution…

As winter weather hits us again, many people confuse the current weather (cold) with the long-term direction of the climate (warmer). Just because it is cold outside right now doesn’t mean that global warming isn’t real. Global warming has to do with the climate, with the long-term trend of the world’s average temperature. The short-term weather has to do with what is happening this week or next in the part of the world where we currently reside. The two are not identical, and colder weather does not contradict the fact that our climate is warming up. Another reason the two related but not identical issues are confusing is that global climate change is not uniform across the globe. Just because it is colder where you live doesn’t mean it isn’t warmer, relatively, elsewhere. In fact, global warming is taking place much more at the northern latitudes than in the continental U.S.

This is the reason why, even though the U.S. is experiencing more severe winter weather, the Arctic summer ice is covering less and less of the Arctic water, opening the fabled Northern Passage. It is still very cold at the North Pole, but it is relatively warmer. Average temperatures have already increased in the northern latitudes by almost 4 degrees Fahrenheit, much more than at temperate latitudes. This is also one reason among many why global warming is so threatening. As temperatures warm more rapidly nearer both poles, two things happen which bode ill for the entire world.

First, ice, ice sheets and glaciers are melting rapidly, much more rapidly than even the most dire predictions of a few years ago. The glaciers on Greenland are melting more quickly, and also accelerating the speed at which they move towards the open seas. In the Antarctic, massive ice sheets are breaking off. Both these developments will cause a faster than predicted rise in the ocean level. Instead of happening over a thousand years, the complete melting of the Greenland glaciers is likely to take a few hundred years – and when they are completely melted that will increase sea levels by over 25 feet, inundating many coastal cities. Second, as the northern latitudes warm more rapidly, more and more of the permafrost will melt, releasing both carbon dioxide and methane that have been frozen for millennia. This could result in runaway global warming, coming on top of the direct human release of greenhouse gases.

There are many more reasons to be concerned about global climate change, but just because it is cold outside is no reason at all to ignore the problem. In a thoughtful article at HuffingtonPost, environmentalist Bill McKibben explains why climate change is a different kind of problem. He makes the essential point that what climate change skeptics are fighting is not other politicians or scientists; it’s physics.

Author: Marc Brodine, People’s World