Deep Future

Curt Stager's Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth is one of those good news/bad news sort of books. Taking the long view he observes that the good news is human generated global warming has most likely already prevented the next ice age, which would not be due for another 50,000 years or so anyway. The bad news is that if we don't do something to bring a halt to the carbon dioxide we're pumping into the atmosphere, we'll bring about some fairly unpleasant climate results over the next couple of centuries.

That's sort of the take away from the book, but by no means the really interesting part. The interesting part of the book has more to do with all of the data that climate scientists and paleoecologists such as Stager have accumulated from a close study of ancient climate patterns and changes in earth ecology over the last several hundred thousand years. If you accept Stager's account, which I do, then you have to accept that most of the effects of global warming are already inevitable. The damage, if that's what it is, has been done, and the consequences will play out for centuries whether or not we do anything now or in the near future to reduce greenhouse emissions.

So what are some of these inevitable consequences? Well, sea levels will rise, although most likely only very gradually over the next few centuries. Perhaps more alarming, the seas will acidify, which could very well be devastating for shellfish, coral, and all of those creatures whose habitats will be destroyed by that change in ocean chemistry. Much, but probably not all, of the earth's ice will melt, and the arctic will be open ocean much of the year. Stager is optimistic, however, that humans will cope with these changes, as they have done with previous climate changes. It will not be easy, and it will be expensive. But earth will adjust. We'll abandon low-lying areas, or more likely try to protect them before abandoning them. In fact, this is already happening in some parts of the world: the Netherlands, New Orleans, Bangkok.

Stager's greatest concern is that without any effort to slow the carbon emissions from our use of fossil fuels we may face what he describes as a worse case scenario in which much greater warming will bring about far more serious climatic changes, more devastating to the earth's ecology, and more enduring. But some readers worry that Stager takes such a long view he seems to minimize the seriousness of the choices that must be made relatively soon. And by emphasizing that much of the damage has already been done, and will not be undone for centuries, he contributes to a fatalistic attitude. I don't think that's fair. His analysis is sober and he does make it clear that while the consequences are certain, there is a difference between the moderate warming we are already experiencing and the much more catastrophic warming that will come from continued use of fossil fuels. Finally, the questions he raises are moral and ethical: Do we really care what happens to humankind after we're gone?