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The Medium or the Message? Global Warming Conference at UNCW, June 8-9, 2007 An Intimate Reflection
By the time of the Global Warming Conference, I was not exactly a camp follower. But as I made my way into the lobby at UNCW’s Warwick Center that Friday evening the first thing I learned was that conference registration had exceed my expectations. Then I was immediately impressed both with the degree of organization and the turn-out. No. It wasn’t going to be quite what I had in mind—not exactly what I had been working for over the past eight months through all the meetings, emails, phone calls, late night digressions, and all the rest. But on Friday night the one-and-half hour warm-up with soft drinks and hors d’oeuvres that I thought totally unnecessary passed like a snap; and then there was UNCW Professor Larry Cahoon standing in front of the 200 plus audience, clicking through the wide-screen images of his power point presentation. “You certainly don’t want to miss this,” I said to myself, taking a seat at a round table in the conference hall. On this night, Larry Cahoon appears as a short man dressed in black with a white tie, with an obviously powerful mind, a crisp articulate use of the language, and a sardonic sense of humor. As a marine biologist, limnologist, and professional oceanographer, Cahoon’s job is to open the conference by presenting the scientific facts. He informs the audience that a consensus of scientific opinion now supports the theory developed first by NASA pioneer, James Hansen in the 1970s. Hansen was among the first to assert that CO2, Carbon Monoxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” collect in the upper atmosphere where they absorb certain types of solar radiation reflected off the earth’s surface. For a moment colored lines seem to wriggle off the screen, a contemporary ritual meant to evoke visions of soaring temperatures—seas, rivers, mountains, our planetary by-ways utterly transformed. No doubt that global warming is indeed occurring according to this Duke University Phd.. Many people by now have of course already seen the photos of the melting glaciers and the polar icecaps. But many also remain skeptical. Cahoon’s presentation seems to focus mostly on cumulative scientific data, like the temperature readings from central England from 1650 to the present, showing the recent long term warming trend. And then the data on CO2 and other greenhouse gases. These have been increasing steadily over the past 100 years, adding plausibility to the link between global warming and the gases. But also according Cahoon, if we continue to do what we are doing, increasing hydrocarbons in the atmosphere at the current rate, the result will be that by 2090, average daily global temperatures could increase by four to six degrees. This would be simply disastrous, if not catastrophic for human habitation. “Why so?” I hear myself thinking as I glance at the stunned but impassive faces of those sitting next to me in the darkened conference hall. An increase in global temperatures at that level would transform the planet’s climate and wreck havoc on the earth’s ecosystems. Listening to Cahoon by now, I feel a sudden satisfaction with the conference. For a moment I forget about the speakers who cancelled or the contributors who copped out. Cahoon pops up a twenty-inch full color image of Alfred E. Newman on the screen and this brings laughter. Sitting next to me at the table is a city planner, who traveled to the conference from coastal Virginia along with his assistant. I can’t remember who exactly took the swipe at the current U.S. leadership. But I do recall Cahoon’s detour through the Martian polar icecaps, the skewering references to Rush Limbaugh. And just then I start to think, “Hey, I can’t believe they have someone this good at UNCW for a conference on global warming.” And then I hear Larry Cahoon describe the irate calls to UNCW Chancellor Rosemary DePaolo, the demands for censure and for silence. I guess these were some fans of Torquemada, or maybe Anthony Comstock and the American Bible League. As I hear Cahoon talk about the academic tenure system, I realize again that the assault on university tenure is as real in this country today as the assault on science itself. Suddenly, before the conference has made much headway, the devastating truth comes home to me. Professor Larry Cahoon of UNCW expects us to do something about all this. Yes. Science clearly has spoken, and who’s listening? Are we just going to disconnect again? Where are the students, the young people from this campus sparkling with energetic devotion to public service? Where are America’s youth? Do you mean that somehow, all of us, we have to change the way we are doing things?... I flash back on Sierra Club meetings, Sierra Club outings, deep woods Okefenokee, twelve years ago. Then, a trip to Washington, D.C. by Boeing 737 at 28,000 feet in the dead of night, looking down at the sea of lights that illuminate the primal darkness of the earth’s surface. “We have met the enemy, and he is us,” I hear Larry Cahoon say. Cahoon closes with a screen image of the earth being struck by a gigantic asteroid from space. It’s all over for civilization as we know it, possibly humanity itself. The last chapter of a sometimes sordid tale of murder, ignorance, and war. An incorrigible species not much better than the dinosaurs... On my feet and on the way out now, I exchange words with the city planner, with Pat Delair, a Wilmington City Council member, with Agnes McDonald, a Wilmington writer, and with various other people. But I don’t tell them exactly what I am thinking. Actually, I’m wondering if the conference will deliver the news to those teachers of prophecy and biblical sanctity about the impending global ecologic apocalypse? Maybe not. They might just as likely blame the scientists for thinking this up, for proclaiming it as science, for coming up with this obviously incorrect version of humanity’s last days on earth. Or, they may prescribe more biblical constriction as the solution. The end of the world must of course be consistent with its beginning—carried out as an act of God in his solemn majesty. Then of course, the constrictors will simply disconnect, having said everything there is to say on the subject. More convention buses on their way to church revivals. More hydrocarbons pouring into the atmosphere. Millions of satisfied customers. The next morning, I am still euphoric about the conference. Actually, I’m feeling somewhere between rapture and a deadly nameless fear that the traffic jam on College Road is a deliberate plot. They can’t do this to us! But quickly enough a substantial audience has assembled and soon we pass into the conference hall to hear Dr. Bert Drake, a plant physiologist presently employed by the Smithsonian Institute. This jovial, white-haired, stoutly built research scientist, having years of field-work and university employment to chalk up on his webpage, actually looks like everyone’s image of the kindly grandfather whose wit and charm immediately inspire trust. But once he launches into his power point, it’s clear that he is all science. Drake’s objective is to take the global warming debate beyond Al Gore—presumably so that no one at the conference would have to mention that politically sensitive subject. I think, as I sit at the table I am once again sharing again with the city planner and his assistant...I think, well, why not talk about Al Gore? Why not? But Drake doesn’t have much to say about Al Gore, though he does set out to build upon the science already laid out by Larry Cahoon and James Hansen. The evidence of rising global temperatures is arrayed in various charts and graphs, some with the wriggling lines, along with increasing volumes of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Then, the melting glaciers, the polar icecaps, the oceans warming, the hurricanes and the droughts and rising sea levels. “I think the evidence is so strong that the big hurricanes are getting bigger,” says Drake. Then, Drake produces statistics that focus on rising sea levels. If the current rate of sea level increase, at approximately one foot per century continues, we may have problems. But the research indicates that in the past 20,000 years sea levels have risen much faster, and with the continued pattern of global warming and melting ice... If the Greenland ice-melt continues to accelerate as it appears to have in recent years, it could mean a sea level rise of as much as five meters in a relatively short amount of time. So, what’s the solution, I find myself thinking. Drake says the problem is linked to a pattern of energy consumption that pumps more hydrocarbons into the atmosphere. It seems that we in the U.S. are the world’s leading energy consumer, heading up the list that includes Canada, Europe, Japan and others. Automobiles in the U.S. are alone adding CO2 to the atmosphere at a rate of about one pound of CO2 per mile, at a fuel consumption rate of approximately twenty miles per gallon. With coal-fired, oil-fired and other fossil fuel-burning power plants included, the U.S. emits more than twenty tons of CO2 per person into the atmosphere. Energy consumption on a world basis adds to this, so that in 2003 alone, more than 7.3 gigatons were added, enough to fill more than two billion Goodyear blimps with CO2. Bert Drake’s weather forecast, on the basis of all this, is about as gloomy as one might imagine. If nothing is done to alter present trends, by 2100 global temperatures could be anywhere from five to six degrees warmer on average. The implications of this are clearly catastrophic. But at this point, Drake takes things in a new direction. According to the Smithsonian sci-meister, a broad array of possible alternative energy choices offer hope for the future. And now Drake begins to run through these. Nuclear energy? Renewable energy? The rising and falling of tides, harvesting wind through tower generators, solar energy, biofuels, the burning of hemp to generate electric power? All of these offer promising alternatives. And the increased reliance upon mass transit and the switch to cleaner and more efficient cars—such as the electric car… We can also reduce the rate at which we are deforesting the planet. Since the U.S. is the world’s leading consumer of energy, a decisive change for the U.S. could have profound implications for the world. Something about Drake’s talk stays with me as this elderly but still vigorous man retires from the stage. The next event is an activist panel, the one I’ve been waiting for. But as the group, consisting of representatives chosen from each of the leading environmental organizations active in the area assembles at the long table at the front of the assembly hall, I am still thinking about Drake. “The earth’s atmosphere is actually quite small and vulnerable, approximately sixty miles thick,” I hear him say. “We have a real problem…” So there, I think. The audience seems for a moment almost in a state of shock—but the shock is mostly about our human ignorance, our belief system—the collection of assumptions accrued through centuries of human existence that now fall discarded by the wayside. You see, we believed in the limitless abundance of the natural world. But the earth’s atmosphere is really sort of like, well, down at beach. People can’t imagine that tossing their cigarette butts in the sand could actually injure the beach; but if 150,000 people toss their butts onto the sand every month over the course of the summer—what do you have? You have a filthy beach. As the activist panel sits down at the table facing the conference hall, I’m starting to feel smug again. Yes. This is the part I’ve been waiting for. Because it was all along my plan to empower the activists by getting them out before the public and encouraging them to tell their stories, to get their message out. Yes. To make the people more aware. And I was going to ask this burning question, you see, on the subject of democracy—I think there’s some real problem going on here, because the fact is, do you think, do you think the activists on the environmental questions have really had access to the public? One-by-one, the panel members walk to the podium. There’s Desi Horton, a short but vigorous little woman with a keen mind who now speaks with a certain shyness. She talks about the national program undertaken by the Sierra Club to promote Cool Cities across America. More than 400 U.S. cities have now signed on to actively work to cut energy consumption and reduce thermal pollution, but our city, Wilmington, N.C., so we are told, cannot afford this. As I take notes on all this, I glance at the city planner and his assistant who sit next to me. I think—now we have arrived. But as Desi retires and is replaced by the other group reps, I am starting to think there is something too routine in this. The message is somehow is getting watered down. We have the North Carolina Coastal Federation and the Cape Fear River Watch. Then, we have Pender Watch and Brunswick Citizens for a Safe Environment. They recently waged the Stop Hugo Neu Landfill campaign, which they fought to a standstill; and then the Audubon Society. |
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UNCW’s Dr. Larry Cahoon. “We have met the enemy. and he is us.” |
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Dr. Bert Drake of the Smithsonian Institute. “I think the evidence is so strong that the big hurricanes are getting bigger.” |
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Photos by Vicki Merbler |