The future ain’t what it used to be.
This aphorism by Yogi Berra, the Baseball Hall of Fame philosopher, used to be a funny example of a tangled arrow of time. But now it means that, thanks to global warming and ocean acidification, our kids and grandkids cannot have the kind of future that we had; they can count on a future of high risk, both directly from climate change and from the regional collapse of civilization.
People take sensible precautions when the risk is high. Ask a roomful of people if they have fire insurance. Almost all will raise a hand. Ask how many have had a fire in the last ten years, and almost none will respond. Yet people pay for insurance because, should a fire happen, they could lose everything—and still have to pay off the mortgage.
But uncertainty is another matter. Those with money to loan will worry about ever getting it back, and so loan rates will soar.
Insurance companies will simply stop insuring some things–currrently coastal real estate in Florida–making it even more difficult to get a mortgage.
Climate change has a very high procrastination penalty that just grows and grows with each passing year of inaction—rather like what happens if you don’t pay off your credit card. But for climate, there is no such thing as a fresh start from bankruptcy.
We need to innovate in a hurry and, considering our reputation for technological innovation, it’s odd that the U.S. has fallen behind.
- Many U.S. geothermal installations are imported from Israel. Though the Hot Rock Energy concept was invented in 1972 at Los Alamos, the action is now in Europe and Australia.
- The U.S. hasn’t started a nuclear plant since 1978. The French and Japanese are now the most experienced. The French electricial utility will help build, and is a major investor in, the U.S. nuclear plants in the pipeline.
- The Germans have become the innovators in “green” buildings.
- The Japanese and the Germans have more experience with solar power panels, though innovative thin-film photovoltaic from the U.S. is starting to make a difference.
- Think of wind turbine innovations and Spain, Denmark, and Germany will come to mind.
To my surprise, there are now Italian windmills back home in Kansas! The largest Italian utility company is building a big wind farm near Hayes, Kansas to sell clean electricity to the coal-dependent American Midwest.
Countries that innovate early get the new jobs, developing an economic edge over the C-free laggards that end up having to later import the technology.
One reason we have a standing army is in case we are surprised. Now we must provide something similar for climate surprises. We need the resilience to bounce back when something unexpected hits.
We also must have a good safety margin. We routinely have safety margins in support strength or fire resistance. No architect would design a stadium without calculating the weight of the fans packing those bleachers—and then, for safety, doubling the number. Actually, it’s the noncritical components that have a safety factor of two. For components whose failure could result in substantial financial loss, serious injury, or death, a safety factor of four or higher is common. Yes, that’s more expensive, one reason why building collapses are common in countries where building inspectors can be bribed to ignore skimping on the materials.
For climate protection, we need a safety margin in schedule. Our response needs to make a lot of progress up front, just as insurance against something as unexpected as, say, a fire in a rain forest.
We’ve only got one habitable planet and we dare not shave our margins.