On November 19, 2004, a land use planning committee that I chaired in the town of Guilford, Connecticut conducted a day long workshop for shoreline municipal officials on the subject of possible climate change impacts on the Connecticut shoreline. Walking into that event, I was neutral on the subject. But as a resident of fifteen years in this shoreline community, and an alumnus of the Economic Development Commission and Planning and Zoning Commission, I was fully informed of the divisions that can occur in our community over issues of land use and the environment.
The primary objective of our community was to explore the potential for transit-oriented development around our train station on the southern area of our town center bordering Long Island Sound. Being a shoreline area, it was both high value and environmentally sensitive. The motivations for development and protection were equally present, and potentially disruptive to any plan. Knowing that climate change was an evolving issue of increasing visibility, I decided as a matter of due diligence that the committee should inform itself of the issue and avoid ‘unforced errors.’ Put simply, the challenge was to determine where we could safely and beneficially pour concrete, and where we shouldn’t.
As I said, I entered the event neutral on the subject, but wanting to learn enough to make reasonable judgments. I left stunned. The presenters, a collection of scientists, environmental managers from the FEMA and NOAA, a world-renowned economist on the subject, a nationally recognized land use attorney and an investment advisor gave us their assessments of what could lie ahead, with appropriate caveats, but credible grounding in science and economics.
Before choosing the accounting profession, I had considered a career in science, and have retained a layperson’s level of engagement with the field. I understand that the nature of science is the inherent disruption of what we believe we know for the furtherance of knowledge. The dueling of theories among advocates in the field can be as political and unsettling to the observer as anything in politics. To some degree, it is a part of the ‘trial by combat’ through which hypotheses are refined into fact. But sometimes it ends in suppression by brute force of peer pressure. Science is conducted by humans. It has no immunity from the human afflictions that affect all our other endeavors, although it does strive for some safeguards. But the information gained from this workshop has served as the baseline against which I have monitored subsequent events, and it has stood the test of time.
The presentations avoided the sensational and stuck to facts. It presented ranges of possibilities in impacts and probable trends. As I had requested, it focused on probable impacts which would be local, and not on means of prevention in which we must participate, but which our town cannot achieve alone.
I left the workshop with two conclusions:
- If what these folks presented comes to pass, Guilford, the state, the country and the world will be in deep-severe. (I pride myself on having a firm grasp of the obvious)
- If what these folks presented comes to pass, there is no freaking way that government at any level is remotely prepared to deal with it, which will make a bad situation far worse.
Note that I said ‘government’ and not ‘society’. I exhibited a biased assumption that if government would comprehend the situation, it would be able to lead the public to the proper actions to avoid disaster. I was wrong. Not about climate change being an existential threat. And not about government being unprepared to deal with it. But about the ability of our citizenry to understand and accept and act upon what is in its own best interest. Our response to COVID-19 proved to me that I misunderstood the depth of our social dysfunction, which has been descending steadily for the past 40 years.
A word about government. In the United States, and I presume most places practicing some level of democratic governance, government is not designed to be proactive. Liberals expect it to be infinitely proactive. Conservatives oppose anything beyond a minimal need; however they choose to define ‘minimal’ at any point in time. Some are apparently still rutted in 1776. Climate change demands a proactive, but reasoned, response.
‘Government’, as we broadly think of it, is composed of two layers: the administrative layer which serves as a foundation for ongoing day-to-day activity, and the political layer which rests upon it, and provides enablement and direction to the administrative layer (or not).
The political ‘layer’ in turn is comprised of two factions. One that represents voter constituencies, and one that represents economic constituencies. Those factions reside side-by-side in the schizophrenic mind of the average politician, the voting constituency dominates to some degree for three months every biennial election cycle; the economic constituency that finances campaigns (and whatever else) dominates the other twenty-one months.
Then there’s the voting constituency. The People are far more numerous than the corpocracy, but seriously uninformed, disunited to any particular purpose, and poorly organized. The corpocracy is fewer in votes, but far superior in resources and organization to project their will to effect. In any given contest, who would you put your money on? Who do our political leadership listen to most closely?
None of this is news. It just encapsulates the dilemma of climate change and so much else.
But the news is COVID-19 and what it tells us about our society, and our willingness to act within our ability in our individual and collective self-interest. A society that can take simple measures to protect itself in the face of an immediate and manifestly deadly threat, and refuses to do so, has no credible capacity to deal effectively with a threat like climate change that is gradual, but accelerating, long term, multi-faceted, integrated and diverse in its consequences, and not immediately responsive to our most aggressive potential remedies.
Since the day of that workshop, I have been engaged with the subject on various levels. I have focused on impacts rather than prevention and remediation. I have chosen that path in the belief that, unless we clearly understand what we are at risk of losing, we are unlikely to be motivated to do what we must to prevent it. (Short form: in this case, the stick might work faster than the carrot.) I was wrong. Neither are working.
Thus, the administrative layer of government cannot lead us to where we need to be if it is not directed and enabled by the political layer that oversees it. The political layer keeps its ear to the ground, its eye to the sky, and mumbles platitudes while it hopes no one will hold it to account during its present and presumptive future. The corpocracy plays good-cop/bad-cop on the subject where it can, only making substantive responses when the existential interests of some of its members are put in play. And the ill-informed, generally unmotivated, and too often antipathetic voters return the same leaders to power who willfully stick their heads in the sand at their constituents’ ultimate expense. (As Exhibit A, I submit Senator Snowball from Oklahoma.)
I was wrong. It is not government’s failure that dooms us to respond effectively to climate change. It is ours. Enough of us do not care enough to make a difference. Thus, we are approaching escape velocity from the gravitational pull of responsibility, but not from the impact of consequences.
Happy Independence Day.
Onward
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