David W. Orr

Creating an Earth Atmospheric Trust

STABILIZING CONCENTRATIONS OF GREENHOUSE GASES IN THE EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE AT A level that will control climate change will require drastic departures from business as usual. Here, we introduce one response to this challenge that may seem visionary or idealistic today, but that could become realistic once we reach a tipping point that opens a window of opportunity for embracing major changes. The core of this system is the idea of a common asset trust. Trusts are widely used and well-developed legal mechanisms designed to protect and manage assets on behalf of specific beneficiaries. Extending this idea to the management and protection of a global commons, such as the atmosphere, is a new but straightforward extension of this idea. Because the atmosphere is global, the Earth Atmospheric Trust would be global in scope; however, initial implementation at a regional or national scale may be necessary. We provide an outline of the steps that must be taken to create and manage such a system. (i) Create a global cap-and-trade system for all greenhouse gas emissions. We believe a cap-andtrade system is preferable to a tax, because the major goal is to cap and reduce the quantity of emissions in a predictable way. Caps set quantity and allow price to vary; taxes set price and allow quantity to vary.

Optimism and Hope in a Hotter Time

We like optimistic people. They are fun, often funny, and very often capable of doing amazing things otherwise thought to be impossible. Were I stranded on a life raft in the middle of the ocean and had a choice of a companion between an optimist and pessimist, I’d want an optimist, providing he did not have a liking for human flesh. Optimism, however, is often rather like Yankee fans believing that the team can win the game when it’s the bottom of the ninth; they’re up by a run, have two outs, a two strike count against a .200 hitter, and Mariano Rivera in his prime is on the mound. They are optimistic for good reason. Red Sox fans, on the other hand, believe in salvation by small percentages and hope for a hit to get the runner home from second base and tie the game. Optimism is the recognition that the odds are in your favor; hope is the faith that things will work out whatever the odds. Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up. Hopeful people are actively engaged in defying or changing the odds. Optimism leans back, puts its feet up, and wears a confident look knowing that the deck is stacked. I know of no good reason for anyone to be optimistic about the human future, but I know a lot of reasons to be hopeful. How can one be optimistic, for example, about global warming? First, it isn’t a “warming,” but rather a total destabilization of the planet brought on by the behavior of one species: us. Whoever called this “warming” must have worked for the advertising industry or the northern Siberian Bureau of Economic Development. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the thousand-plus scientists who study climate and whose livelihoods depend on authenticity, replicability, data, facts, and logic—put it differently. A hotter world means rising odds of more heat waves and droughts; more and larger storms; bigger hurricanes; forest dieback; changing ecosystems; more tropical diseases in formerly temperate areas; rising ocean levels (faster than once thought); losing many things nature once did for us; more and nastier pests; food shortages due to drought, heat, and more and nastier pests; more human deaths from climatedriven weather events; more refugees fleeing floods, rising seas, drought, and expanding deserts; international conflicts over energy, food, and water; and if we do not act quickly and wisely, runaway climate change resulting in some new stable state, possibly without humans. Some of these changes are inevitable given the volume of heattrapping gases we have already put into the atmosphere. There is a lag of several decades between the emission of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases and the weather headlines, and still another lag until we experience their full economic and political effects. The sum total of the opinions of climate experts is that the planet has already warmed 0.8 ◦C; it will warm another ∼0.6 ◦C; it is too late to avoid trauma but probably not too late to avoid global catastrophe, which includes the possibility of runaway climate change; there are no easy answers or magical solutions; it is truly a global emergency. Whether we can escape global catastrophe is anyone’s guess, because the level of heat-trapping gases is higher than it has been in the past 650,000 years and quite likely for a great deal longer. We are playing a global version of Russian roulette, and no one knows for certain what the safe thresholds of various heat-trapping gases might be. Scientific certainty about the pace of climate change over the past three decades has a brief shelf-life, but the pattern is clear. As scientists learn more, what they are finding is that the situation is worse than they previously thought. Ocean acidification went from being a problem a century or two hence to being a crisis in a matter of decades. Melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets went from being possible hundreds of years hence to a matter of decades and a century or two. The threshold of perceived safety went down from perhaps 560 ppm CO2 to perhaps 450 ppm CO2, and so forth. Optimism in these circumstances is like whistling while walking past the graveyard at midnight. There is no good case to be made for it but the sound of whistling sure beats the sound of rustling in the bushes beside the fence. But whistling does not change the probabilities one iota or much influence any lurking goblins.

The Liberal Arts, the Campus, and the Biosphere.

D ebates about the content and purposes of education are mostly conducted among committees of the learned conditioned to such fare. Allan Bloom changed all of that in 1987 by writing a best seller on the subject (Bloom 1987). Professor Bloom, as far as I can tell, believes that questions about the content of education (i.e., curriculum) were settled some time ago — perhaps once and for all with Plato, but certainly no later than Nietzsche. Subsequent elaborations, revisions, and refnements have worked great mischief with the high culture he purports to defend. Bloom ’s discontent focuses on American youth. He finds them empty, intellectually slack, and morally ignorant. The “ soil ” of their souls is “ unfriendly ” to the higher learning. And he thinks no more highly of their music and sexual relationships.

Pascal's wager and conomics in a hotter time

Abstract In wrestling with the problem of the existence of God, Blaise Pascal proposed a line of reasoning at once prudent and self-interested. His reasoning is instructive to policy makers now facing the prospect of global warming. In contrast to some economists and the findings of the Adaption Panel of the National Academy of Sciences, Pascals logic would lead us to minimize greenhouse gas emissions for reasons of both prudence and self-interest.

Governance in the Long Emergency

The first evidence linking climate change and human emissions of carbon dioxide was painstakingly assembled in 1897 by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius. What began as an interesting but seemingly unimportant conjecture about the effect of rising carbon dioxide on temperature has turned into a flood of increasingly urgent and rigorous warnings about the rapid warming of Earth and the dire consequences of inaction. Nonetheless, the global dialogue on climate is floundering while the scientific and anecdotal evidence of rapid climate destabilization grows by the day.1

Land use and climate change.

According to Roger Pielke Sr., a leading authority on land-use change, “change and variability in land use by humans and the resulting alterations in surface features are major but poorly recognized drivers of long-term global climate patterns ... these spatially heterogeneous land use effects may be at least as important in altering the weather as changes in climate patterns associated with greenhouse gases.”1

Agriculture and global warming

Abstract Global warming poses a distinct threat to agricultural systems worldwide and to attempts to place farming on more sustainable foundations. The magnitude and severity of that threat is systematically understated by the use of inappropriate models of risk and economic analysis that underestimate potential costs of global warming. The author proposes that the logic underlying Pascals wager about the existence of God, a variant of minimax strategies in game theory, may be an instructive alternative.

The Life Required. Political Economy in the Long Emergency

The neo-classical economy has assumed the dominant role in global affairs, riding roughshod over political systems and society alike. The present economy is predicated on continual growth, externalizing its full costs, and inequality, and is powered by fossil fuels that are rapidly changing the climate. The ratio of true wealth to ‘ilth’ has shifted to the latter. The prospects for a durable and fair economy will depend greatly on strengthening democratic controls. It will begin from the bottom up and is evident in the gathering momentum of social movements worldwide.

Hope (in a Hotter Time) (2007)

W e like optimistic people. They are fun, often funny, and very often capable of doing amazing things otherwise thought to be impossible. Were I stranded on a life raft in the middle of the ocean and had a choice between an optimist and pessimist as a companion, I’d want an optimist, providing he did not have a liking for human flesh. Optimism, however, is often rather like a Yankee fan believing that the team can win the game when it’s the bottom of the ninth, they’re up by a run, with two outs, a two-strike count against a. 200 hitter, and Mariano Rivera in his prime is on the mound. He or she is optimistic for good reason. The Red Sox fans, on the other hand, believe in salvation by small percentages and hope for a hit to get the runner home from second base and tie the game. Optimism is the recognition that the odds are in your favor; hope is the faith that things will work out whatever the odds. Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up. Hopeful people are actively engaged in defying the odds or changing the odds. Optimism leans back, puts its feet up, and wears a confident look, knowing that the deck is stacked.

Two Meanings of Sustainability (1988)

A sustainable society, as commonly understood, does not undermine the resource base and biotic stocks on which its future prosperity depends. In the words of Lester Brown, Christopher Flavin, and Sandra Postel, “ a sustainable society is one that satisfies its needs without jeopardizing the prospects of future generations ” (Brown et al. 1990, 173). To be sustainable means living on income, not capital. The word sustainable, however, conceals as much as it reveals. Hidden beneath the rhetoric are assumptions about growth, technology, democracy, public participation, and human values. The term entered wide public use with Lester Brown ’s book Building a Sustainable Society and with the International Union for Conservation of Nature ’s World Conservation Strategy, both of which appeared in 1980. In 1987, the Brundtland Commission adopted “ sustainable development ” as the pivotal concept in its report Our Common Future. As defined by the Brundtland Commission, development is sustainable if it “ meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs ” (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, 43). Sustainable development requires “ more rapid economic growth in both industrial and developing countries. ” The commission, therefore, politely appeased both sides of the debate. The word sustainable pacifies environmentalists, while development has a similar effect on businessmen and bankers.