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The chapter discusses the problem of global warming and climate change as one of global pollution with widest effects of global externality. It describes the characteristics of the green house gases (GHG), their composition and regional source wise distribution and shows how their accumulation in the atmosphere leads to the rise of global temperature and climate change. It then describes the physical and economic impacts of climate change with the consequent loss of GDP and economic assets. The chapter further examines the prospect of low carbon economic growth for abating climate change particularly in the Indian context. It also discusses the issues relating to the adaptation to climate change as some climate change would be inevitable in future. It finally addresses the institutional issue of collective action for mitigation and adaptation to climate change and concludes by describing India’s policy approach of defining the shared global responsibility in the context.

Lake Superior is one of the fastest warming lakes in the world, leading to enormous changes in its ecosystems and human communities. How might changing climates affect the mobilization of contaminants in the Lake Superior basin? How might those contaminants affect resiliency toward climate change? And what can we do about it?

John Wills begins this chapter by contrasting the place of the environment for Henry David Thoreau in the 1840s with its status in the early twenty-first century, in which the preservation of national parks sits alongside the heavy toll on the natural world caused by 150 years of industrialisation and commerce. Exploring the United States as a place of extremes and contradictions when it comes to environmental issues, the chapter focuses in particular on the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 and related issues of global warming and energy consumption. Wills moves on to consider the growing environmental consciousness of the new century, green-branded commerce, the new commitment to green technology amongst major manufacturers, and national environmental policies. The chapter ends with a consideration of Al Gore’s environmental film An Inconvenient Truth (2006) as a contemporary take on Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) for promoting the environmental message.

The Introduction lays out the stakes of the security society’s militarization of the environment, its orchestrating of “climate change war games,” and its connection to a long history of an increasingly foreclosing and aggressive pattern of thought that began during the enclosure movement’s privatization of nature and the co-constituent rise of “common law”—the legal system that erased the idea that humans were environmental inhabitants.

To deal in a systematic way with the catastrophic risks identified in chapter 1 requires first assessing them and then devising and implementing sensible responses. Assessment involves first of all collecting the technical data necessary to gauge, so far as that may be possible, the probability of particular risks, the purely physical consequences if the risks materialize (questions of value are for later), and the feasibility of various measures for reducing either the risks or the magnitude of the consequences by various amounts. The next step in the assessment stage is to embed the data in a cost-benefit analysis of the alternative responses to the risk. I am not proposing that cost-benefit analysis, at least as it is understood by economists, should be the decision procedure for responding to the catastrophic risks. But it is an indispensable step in rational decision making in this as in other areas of government regulation. Effective responses to most catastrophic risks are likely to be extremely costly, and it would be mad to adopt such responses without an effort to estimate the costs and benefits. No government is going to deploy a system of surveillance and attack for preventing asteroid collisions without a sense of what the system is likely to cost and what the expected benefits (roughly, the costs of asteroid collisions that the system would prevent multiplied by the probabilities of such collisions) are likely to be relative to the costs and benefits both of alternative systems and of doing nothing. The “precautionary principle” (“better safe than sorry”) popular in Europe and among Greens generally is not a satisfactory alternative to cost-benefit analysis, if only because of its sponginess—if it is an alternative at all. In its more tempered versions, the principle is indistinguishable from cost-benefit analysis with risk aversion assumed. Risk aversion, as we know, entails that extra weight be given the downside of uncertain prospects. In effect it magnifies certain costs, but it does not thereby overthrow cost-benefit analysis, as some advocates of the precautionary principle may believe.

The cases explored here, namely the campaign to establish a sovereign Tibetan homeland and to reduce China’s greenhouse gas emissions, represented a third type of causal process—‘advocacy drift.’ In the former case, Beijing’s refusal to countenance the prospect of a ‘free Tibet’ and drive to protect its own territorial integrity created conditions under which the TAN splintered into a variety of factions. Some of these espoused the use of ‘any means necessary’ to effect the goal of an independent Tibetan state, while others, including the Dalai Lama himself, retreated from the original mission of the TAN and have instead sought greater cultural protection for Tibetans within a more multinational China. In the case of the global arming campaign, advocates of emissions trading abandoned that means of reducing China’s carbon outputs, and chose instead to work with an assortment of state agencies and NGOs to combat global warming on China’s terms. While the mechanisms at play in the intra-campaign changes described in this chapter differ, both call attention to the way in which states shape advocacy campaigns just as campaigns may influence state behaviour.

To summarize very briefly: The risks of global catastrophe are greater and more numerous than is commonly supposed, and they are growing, probably rapidly. They are growing for several reasons: the increasing rate of technological advance—for a number of the catastrophic risks are created or exacerbated by science and its technological and industrial applications (including such humble ones as the internal combustion engine); the growth of the world economy and world population (both, in part, moreover, indirect consequences of technological progress); and the rise of apocalyptic global terrorism. And the risks are, to a degree, convergent or mutually reinforcing. For example, global warming contributes to loss of biodiversity, an asteroid collision could precipitate catastrophic global warming and cause mass extinctions, and cyberterrorism could be employed to facilitate terrorist attacks with weapons of mass destruction. Each catastrophic risk, being slight in a probabilistic sense (or seeming slight, because often the probability cannot be estimated even roughly) when the probability is computed over a relatively short time span, such as a year or even a decade, is difficult for people to take seriously. Apart from the psychological difficulty that people have in thinking in terms of probabilities rather than frequencies, frequencies normally provide a better grounding for estimating probabilities than theory does; frequent events generate information that enables probabilities to be confirmed or updated. The fact that there have been both nuclear attacks and, albeit on a very limited scale, bioterrorist attacks—which, however, resemble natural disease episodes, of which the human race has a long experience—has enabled the public to take these particular risks seriously. The general tendency, however, is to ignore the catastrophic risks, both individually and in the aggregate. Economic, political, and cultural factors, including the religious beliefs prevalent in the United States, reinforce the effect of cognitive factors (including information costs) in inducing neglect of such risks. The neglect is misguided. The expected costs of even very-low-probability events can be huge if the adverse consequences should the probability materialize are huge, or if the interval over which the probability is estimated is enlarged; the risk of a catastrophic collision with an asteroid is slight in the time span of a year, but not so slight in the time span of a hundred years.

For eons the global environment of the planet has shaped the biosphere, and has been in turn shaped by the biosphere. According to the Gaia hypothesis, the overall impact of the biosphere on the global environment has been beneficial for the development and sustenance of life. However, this harmonious relationship between the biosphere and the environment has been disturbed with the emergence of one species, Homo sapiens, in the biosphere in the last million years. Our species has the potential to cause major disruptions in the global environment, thus threatening the integrity of the biosphere and its own survival. Some of these adverse effects are already known. The crucial challenge facing the future of humanity is to achieve a fundamental understanding of the global environment and to arrive at a new harmony between ourselves and nature. The adverse impact of humans on the local environment has been known for some time in human history. Urban pollution is an ancient problem. Land degradation and destruction of natural habitats were the probable causes of the earliest recorded migration of the Chinese people during the Shang Dynasty around 1500 B.C. (about the time of Moses) in the valleys of the Yellow River. However, until recently there has been relatively little anthropogenic impact on the global environment. There are at least two major global environmental problems that have been identified to date: the CO2 greenhouse effect and the global ozone depletion. These problems lie at the heart of what makes Earth a habitable planet. As discussed in chapter 9, Earth's atmosphere is responsible for a greenhouse effect of about 30°C, without which the surface of the planet would be too cold to allow water to flow. A doubling of atmospheric CO2 would increase the mean surface temperature of the planet by 2-3 °C. There would also be major shifts in the patterns of precipitation. Although the anticipated climatic changes caused by CO2 are small compared to the variations in climate in the geological history of the planet, the rate of change is unprecedented and could result in major social and economical disruptions. As discussed in chapter 9, life on land became possible only after an ozone shield had developed. As far as we know, no advanced living organism can survive the harsh radiation environment on Earth's surface in the absence of this ultraviolet screen.

Heidegger argues that modern technology’s view of nature as stock or inventory is the outcome of Western metaphysics as “onto-theology,” in which Christianity played a central role. Lynn White offers a historiographical variant, claiming that our environmental problems, of which global climate change is perhaps most manifest today, derive from the putative Christian view of nature as subject to human dominance. This chapter argues that ancient Christianity, especially as articulated in the Orthodox East, has a far different view, from which we could learn today. Here nature is seen as manifesting divine energies (energeiai) that the purified mind (nous) can contemplate noetically, even though the divine essence (ousia) remains transcendent and mysterious. Western Christianity ignores this distinction. Beginning with Augustine (and culminating in Ockham) God becomes increasingly remote from creation. The analogia entis is a last, unsuccessful attempt to retrieve the divine immanence that has endured in the Christian East.

The pressure on planetary resources is substantially driven by increases in energy demands that have been mostly met by the combustion of fossil fuels. The basis of the warming in the troposphere is explained starting from the molecular structure of atmospheric components and their resulting rotational and vibrational spectra. From the absorptions in the infrared, the radiative efficiencies of atmospheric gases can be established. The residence times of gases in the atmosphere is explained on the basis of their atmospheric chemistry. Taking these factors together with atmospheric concentrations, the Global-Warming and -Temperature Potentials can be derived. The overall energy balance in the atmosphere is shown and the resulting net radiative forcing. The principle of the sustainability triangle is explained showing that reduction in radiative forcing may be achievable by a summation of contributions.

The conclusion critically examines one possible legacy for the relay of chemical image-making and its fusions with combustion-engine research examined in this book: the Anthropocene. Noting ways in which James Watt and British industrialism have figured in the historiography of an epoch of humanity’s influence on the global climate (and in critiques of the Anthropocene), the conclusion highlights the abiding, art-historical force of tools and concepts rooted in the work of Alois Riegl. Against persisting resistance within art history to interpretations privileging materials and techniques, it concludes by considering the contours and possibilities of an “elemental art history.”

I have said that the dangers of catastrophe are growing. One reason is the rise of apocalyptic terrorism. Another, however—because many of the catastrophic risks are either created or amplified by science and technology—is the breakneck pace of scientific and technological advance. A clue to that pace is that between 1980 and 2000 the average annual growth rate of scientific and engineering employment in the United States was 4.9 percent, more than four times the overall employment growth rate. Growth in the number of scientific personnel of the other countries appears to have been slower, but still significant, though statistics are incomplete. Of particular significance is the fact that the cost of dangerous technologies, such as those of nuclear and biological warfare, and the level of skill required to employ them are falling, which is placing more of the technologies within reach of small nations, terrorist gangs, and even individual psychopaths. Yet, great as it is, the challenge of managing the catastrophic risks is receiving less attention than is lavished on social issues of far less intrinsic significance, such as race relations, whether homosexual marriage should be permitted, the size of the federal deficit, drug addiction, and child pornography. Not that these are trivial issues. But they do not involve potential extinction events or the modestly less cataclysmic variants of those events. So limited is systematic analysis of the catastrophic risks that there are no estimates of what percentage either of the federal government’s total annual research and development (R & D) expenditures (currently running at about $120 billion), or of its science and technology expenditures (that is, R & D minus the D), which are about half the total R & D budget, are devoted to protection against them. Not that R & D is the only expenditure category relevant to the catastrophic risks. But it is a very important one. We do know that federal spending on defense against the danger of terrorism involving chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons rose from $368 million in 2002 (plus $203 million in a supplemental appropriation) to more than $2 billion in 2003.

The fourth chapter investigates the significance of gender in relation to global warming, arguing that a feminist response to climate change must not only challenge the ostensibly universal, transcendent perspective of big science and the hegemonic masculinity of impenetrable, aggressive consumption, but also the tendency within feminist organizations and NGOs to reinforce gendered polarities, heteronormativity, and the view of nature as a resource for domestic use. The chapter offers a politics of “insurgent vulnerability,” biodiversity, and sexual diversity as an alternative

You wouldn’t see the asteroid, even though it was several miles in diameter, because it would be hurtling toward you at 15 to 25 miles a second. At that speed, the column of air between the asteroid and the earth’s surface would be compressed with such force that the column’s temperature would soar to several times that of the sun, incinerating everything in its path. When the asteroid struck, it would penetrate deep into the ground and explode, creating an enormous crater and ejecting burning rocks and dense clouds of soot into the atmosphere, wrapping the globe in a mantle of fiery debris that would raise surface temperatures by as much as 100 degrees Fahrenheit and shut down photosynthesis for years. The shock waves from the collision would have precipitated earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, gargantuan tidal waves, and huge forest fires. A quarter of the earth’s human population might be dead within 24 hours of the strike, and the rest soon after. But there might no longer be an earth for an asteroid to strike. In a high-energy particle accelerator, physicists bent on re-creating conditions at the birth of the universe collide the nuclei of heavy atoms, containing large numbers of protons and neutrons, at speeds near that of light, shattering these particles into their constituent quarks. Because some of these quarks, called strange quarks, are hyperdense, here is what might happen: A shower of strange quarks clumps, forming a tiny bit of strange matter that has a negative electric charge. Because of its charge, the strange matter attracts the nuclei in the vicinity (nuclei have a positive charge), fusing with them to form a larger mass of strange matter that expands exponentially. Within a fraction of a second the earth is compressed to a hyperdense sphere 100 meters in diameter, explodes in the manner of a supernova, and vanishes. By then, however, the earth might have been made uninhabitable for human beings and most other creatures by abrupt climate changes.

In this conversation, Nobel Prize winner Mario J. Molina reflects on the ethical side of science. He explains how several decades ago, together with the scientist F. Sherwood Rowland, he predicted that human activity was endangering the ozone layer. They discovered the mechanisms which could bring about the destruction of the layer due to the continuous release of industrial compounds, such as the so-called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), into the atmosphere. Professor Molina relates how the issue with the ozone layer was the first example of a problem on a truly global scale for science and, as such, had to be tackled, because without the ozone layer, life on our planet would not have evolved as we know it. Education and training are proving a great help with how the present challenge of stopping or mitigating the daunting problem of global warming should be approached. In the dialogue, different courses of action for persuading both decision-makers and the public are proposed. It is however proving rather difficult to achieve and something which, according to Professor Molina, is also related to education.

During the past century, the standard measure for safeguarding the maintenance of biodiversity has been the establishment of protected areas in which consumptive uses by humans are minimized. Over the years, the design of protected areas has evolved from the creation of small refuges for particular species to the protection of entire ecosystems that are large enough to maintain most if not all their component species and that are mutually interconnected wherever possible. While many other, equally important, measures are now being contemplated and implemented (e.g., comprehensive land-use planning, sustainable development), protected areas remain the cornerstone of all conservation strategies aimed at limiting the inevitable reduction of this planet’s biodiversity (e.g., World Conservation Strategy, Caring for the Earth, Global Biodiversity Strategy). Existing protected rain forest areas suffer from an array of problems that reduce their effectiveness in a broad conservation strategy. They cover a scant 5 percent of tropical rain forest habitats (WCMC, 1992)— arguably not enough to forestall species extinction, especially since the proportions of areas protected vary appreciably from region to region. Protected areas are often not sited appropriately, and they are often too small to maintain the full diversity of their communities. They will in future be affected by external forces (Neumann and Machlis, 1989), such as changes in local climates caused by extensive deforestation, pollution, or fires emanating from outside; introduced exotic species; and global climate change, which in parts of the tropics will likely manifest itself as an increase in the frequency of long droughts. Fortunately, these existing and anticipated threats are being addressed in some countries and regions by measures such as integrated land-use planning, redesigning parks, and establishing corridors, although ecologists are concerned that not enough is being done (see chapter 3). These shortcomings of protected area networks are significant and need to be redressed, but human activities currently pose far more serious threats to protected areas.

Employing a Stackelberg differential game approach, the chapter derives the carbon tax chosen by a climate coalition of resource consuming countries which purchase the fossil resource from a representative competitive resource supplier. The global climate coalition reduces the speed at which the global fossil resource stock is depleted over time to the socially efficient level by levying the Pigou tax on resource consumption. If the climate coalition is incomplete, the chosen unilateral carbon tax falls short of the Pigou tax. Furthermore, international carbon leakage undermines the effectiveness of the unilateral carbon tax in slowing down the speed of global resource extraction. Nevertheless, under the assumptions made, also the incomplete climate coalition is able to slow down the speed of global extraction to some extent because the chosen carbon tax is time-consistent, irrespective of whether the coalition is global or incomplete.

Alexander von Humboldt (1807) provided the first hint of one of ecology’s most pervasive rules: larger areas contain more species than do small ones. Many ecologists see that rule—the species–area relationship—as one of ecology’s very few general laws (e.g., Lawton 1999, Rosenzweig and Ziv 1999). In the past two centuries, ecologists have learned a lot about species–area relationships. I will explore that knowledge and show that we can already use it in the struggle to minimize extinction losses. It teaches us what proportion of diversity is truly threatened and how to prevent most losses by applying a new strategy of conservation biology. Olaf Arrhenius (1921) and Frank Preston (1960) formalized the species–area pattern by fitting it with a power equation: . . . S = Caz (1) . . . where S is the number of species, A is the area, and C and z are constants. For convenience, ecologists generally employ the logarithmic form of this equation: . . . log S = c + z log A (2) . . . where c = log C. (Note that I do not use the jargon term “species richness.” To understand why, see Rosenzweig et al. 2003.) The species–area power equation, or SPAR, can be fitted to an immense amount of data (Rosenzweig 1995). Ecologists are not sure why a power equation fits islands or continents. But we do have a successful mathematical theory for areas within a province. Brian McGill (personal communication) has deduced the species–area curve within provinces from four assumptions: • The geographical range of each species is independently located with respect to all others. • Species vary in abundance with respect to each other. • Species have a minimum abundance. • Each species’ abundance varies significantly across its own range, being relatively scarce more often than relatively common. (“Relatively” means with respect to its own average abundance.) Data support all four assumptions. From them, McGill shows that there is a species–area curve and that it approximates a power equation whose z-value ranges between 0.05 and 0.25 with a mean of about 0.15.