Bill McKibben “Scares C**p” out of David Letterman on Climate

06 Sep 2010

Joseph Curtin

“It’s going to be a tough century, our job is to make sure it’s not going to be impossible” says Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org in a fascinating recent interview with David Letterman. This is a message which is finally reaching a much wider audience in the US.

McKibben also took the opportunity to expresses his exasperation with the lack of progress made on addressing climate change in the US and places the blame firmly at the door of the US fossil fuel industry for stymieing progress.

But how accurate is this dystopic vision? Let’s start with the IPCC – its 4th Assessment Report predicted further temperature rises of between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees this centaury. Since the 4th Assessment Report many of the predicted impacts of human-caused climate change are occurring much faster than expected, particularly ice melt and sea level rise. Another recent peer reviewed paper suggests that the last time GHG concentrations were as high as they are now, sea levels were 25 – 40 meters higher and the planet was 3-6 degrees warmer.

An excellent and comprehensive overview of the recent scientific findings since IPCC 4 is available here. What is clear is that the science is evolving, but not in the direction a casual observer might think from reading about “climate gate” and smears of the IPCC in the media.

The reality is that climate change is happening in the world we live now. According to the US National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration the first six months of 2010 are the warmest since records began in 1880, the previous decade is the warmest on record, and in total seventeen countries have experienced record temperatures in 2010 including the highest temperature ever recorded in Asia - 53 degrees in Pakistan.

The recent floods in Pakistan and China and the Russian heat wave have been linked to climate change and will become the norm in a warmer world.

And in the face of this enormous challenge the response in the US has been a whimper rather than a roar. Comprehensive climate legislation is dead in the water. The reason? A heady mix of the mighty fossil fuel industry dollar, conservative ideologues and poor reporting of the issue in the media. As Bill McKibben argues, until a coalition can be built in American society which can challenge the power of this alliance, the prospects of an adequate response to climate change from the US remain low.

 

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