It’s hard maintaining an optimistic outlook these days, especially about the environment. U.S. officials are rolling back regulations designed to curb global warming even as reports flood in about its scale and potential consequences. I have thus found solace in two essays that offer upbeat takes on our environmental future. One, “Enlightenment Environmentalism,” is adapted from mega-pundit Steven Pinker’s new bestseller Enlightenment Now. The book argues that we’ve achieved lots of progress, material and moral, and we should achieve lots more as long as we don’t succumb to despair.
In his essay, published in The Breakthrough Journal, Pinker contends that we can solve problems related to climate change “if we sustain the benevolent forces of modernity that have allowed us to solve problems so far, including societal prosperity, wisely regulated markets, international governance, and investments in science and technology.”
Pinker notes that we are already addressing some environmental threats. We have reduced our rate of population growth; made agriculture, transportation and other key industries more energy-efficient; increased the acreage of marine and terrestrial preserves. He sums up our successes as follows:
“Since 1970, when the Environmental Protection Agency was established, the United States has slashed its emissions of five air pollutants by almost two-thirds. Over the same period, the population grew by more than 40 percent, and those people drove twice as many miles and became two and a half times richer. Energy use has leveled off, and even carbon dioxide emissions have turned a corner. These diverging curves refute both the left-wing claim that only de-growth can curb pollution and the right-wing claim that environmental protection must sabotage economic growth and standard of living.”
My mood got another boost from “The Conquest of Climate,” an essay posted by journalist Will Boisvert on his blog. “How bad will climate change be?” Boisvert asks. “Not very. No, this isn’t a denialist screed. Human greenhouse emissions will warm the planet, raise the seas and derange the weather, and the resulting heat, flood and drought will be cataclysmic. Cataclysmic—but not apocalyptic. While the climate upheaval will be large, the consequences for human well-being will be small. Looked at in the broader context of economic development, climate change will barely slow our progress in the effort to raise living standards.”
Boisvert examines four consequences of climate change: water shortages, food shortages, rising air temperatures, and rising seas. He contends that the negative effects of climate change will be offset by continued progress in technology and other realms. As an example, he examines a 2016 Lancet study that predicted that by 2050 climate change will cause food shortages that result in 529,000 deaths each year.
The food shortages, Boisvert points out, “are relative to a 2050 baseline when food will be more abundant than now thanks to advances in agricultural productivity that will dwarf the effects of climate change.” Even factoring in climate change, the Lancet study calculates that per capita food consumption will be higher in 2050 than in 2010. Newsweek’s story on the Lancet study was nonetheless headlined, “Climate change could cause half a million deaths in 2050 due to reduced food availability.”
Boisvert comments: “A headline like ‘Despite climate change, rising food production will save millions of lives’ isn’t great click-bait, but it would give a truer picture of a future under global warming.” He adds: “Global warming won’t wipe us out or even stall our progress, it will just marginally slow ordinary economic development that will still outpace the negative effects of warming and make life steadily better in the future, under every climate scenario.”
Some greens fear that optimism will foster complacency and hence undermine activism. But I find the essays of Pinker and Boisvert, which I highly recommend, inspiring, not enervating. These days, despair is a bigger problem than optimism.
John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings, which belongs to the College of Arts & Letters. This column is adapted from one originally published on his ScientificAmerican.com blog, “Cross-check.”
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