Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [59]
Charlie also spoke briefly of the death of all coral reefs, which would lead to even more severe consequences for oceanic ecosystems. “The thing is, Mr. President, the world’s climate can shift very rapidly. There are scenarios in which the general warming causes parts of the Northern Hemisphere to get quite cold, especially in Europe. If that were to happen, Europe could become something like the Yukon of Asia.”
“Really!” the President said. “Are we sure that would be a bad thing? Just kidding of course.”
“Of course sir, ha ha.”
The President fixed him with a look of mock displeasure. “Well, Charles, all that may be true, but we don’t know for sure if any of that is the result of human activity. Isn’t that a fact?”
“Depends on what you mean by ‘know for sure,’” Charlie said doggedly. “Two and a half billion tons of carbon per year, that’s got to make a difference, it’s just plain physics. You could say it isn’t for sure that the sun will come up tomorrow morning, and in a limited sense you’d be right, but I’ll bet you the sun will come up.”
“Don’t be tempting me to gamble now.”
“And besides, Mr. President, there’s also what they call the precautionary principle, meaning you don’t delay acting on crucial matters when you have a disaster that might happen, just because you can’t be one hundred percent sure that it will happen. Because you can never be one hundred percent sure of anything, and some of these matters are too important to wait on.”
The President frowned at this, and Strengloft interjected, “Charlie, you know the precautionary principle is an imitation of actuarial insurance that has no real resemblance to it, because the risk and the premium paid can’t be calculated. That’s why we refused to hear any precautionary principle language in the discussions we attended at the UN. We said we wouldn’t even attend if they talked about precautionary principles or ecological footprints, and we had very good reasons for those exclusions, because those concepts are not good science.”
The President nodded his “So That Is That” nod, familiar to Charlie from many a press conference. He added, “I always thought a footprint was kind of a simplistic measurement for something this complex anyway.”
Charlie countered, “It’s just a name for a good economic index, Mr. President, calculating use of resources in terms of how much land it would take to provide them. It’s pretty educational, really,” and he launched into a quick description of the way it worked. “It’s a good thing to know, like balancing your checkbook, and what it shows is that America is consuming the resources of ten times the acreage it actually occupies. So that if everyone on Earth tried to live as we do, given the greater population densities in much of the world, it would take fourteen Earths to support us all.”
“Come on, Charlie,” Dr. Strengloft objected. “Next you’ll be wanting us to use Bhutan’s Gross Domestic Happiness, for goodness’ sake. But we can’t use little countries’ indexes, they don’t do the job. We’re the hyperpower. And really, the anticarbon-dioxide crowd is a special interest lobby in itself. You’ve fallen prey to their arguments, but it’s not like CO2 is some toxic pollutant. It’s a gas that is natural in our air, and it’s essential for plants, even good for them. The last time there was a significant rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, human agricultural productivity boomed. The Norse settled Greenland during that period, and there were generally rising lifespans.”
“The end of the Black Death might account for that,” Charlie pointed out.
“Well, maybe rising CO2 levels ended the Black Death.”
Charlie felt his jaw gape.
“It’s the bubbly in my club soda,” the President told him gently.
“Yes.” Charlie rallied.