Changing Climate Changing Lives

We are all facing the likelihood of climate change, bringing upheaval to many and disruption to all.  Those in the younger generations will be most severely affected. Those in the older generations, including the author, after living most of their lives without much concern for the climate, will be less affected but will carry much of the responsibility.  

This book offers an historical perspective. A passenger flight from Washington-Dulles to Beijing ties together the range of human experiences shared not only by its passengers but by the rest of us on the globe. Chapter One gives an overview of the central role that science has played in making modern-day travel possible. Then Chapters Two through Six each gives an historical and present-day account of the world’s numbers, measurements, calendars, clocks and temperature readings. In some cases, such as numbers, people around the globe have become more or less unified, even though differences endure in the words they utter and write. In other cases, most notably in measurements, major differences still exist in habits of thought and communication. Presumably, with increasing international travel and trade, remaining differences will fade.

In Chapter Seven the much more recent but rapidly growing problem of climate change comes front and center. Earlier chapters dealt with changes not relating to climate which were mostly national in scope. As travel and trade grew those changes spread from one place to another. But climate change is a different beast. It pays zero attention to national borders. A scientist speaking at a 1979 meeting rhetorically posed the question: “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wing in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”. Now, four decades later, we are increasingly convinced that the answer is “It could!”.

After highlighting humankind’s history of attention – more aptly, its resignation – to whatever the climate might bring, Chapter Seven takes a closer look at the more scientific attention which has been given to the climate since the 1950s. Several international efforts in the final decades of the past century and the first years of this one did not capture ongoing national commitments. The Paris Agreement of 2015, accepted by essentially all nations, brought a mood of “at last” to many, but in subsequent years nations which emit the vast majority of pollutants into the Earth’s atmosphere have been slow to act upon the commitments they exhibited in Paris. Indeed, the United States, a major polluter, is carrying out the announcement by President Trump in June 2017 that it will withdraw from the Paris Agreement, effective November 2020. Meanwhile, scientists are telling us that the rate of pollution worldwide is climbing and long-term consequences are unpredictable.

Chapter Eight ties together the earlier chapters about other changes widely accepted around the globe an...