A few days ago, The Times ran a report on the drying up of the Great Salt Lake, a story I’m embarrassed to admit had flown under my personal radar. We’re not talking about a hypothetical event in the distant future: The lake has already lost two-thirds of its surface and ecological disasters – salinity rises to the point where wildlife dies, occasional toxic dust storms rage through a metropolitan area of 2.5 million people — seem imminent.
As an aside, I was a little surprised that the article didn’t mention the obvious parallels to the Aral Sea, a huge lake that the Soviet Union had managed to turn into a poisonous desert.
Anyway, what’s happening to the Great Salt Lake is pretty bad. But what really scared me about the report is what the lack of an effective response to the lake crisis says about our ability to respond to the larger, indeed existential, threat of climate change.
If you’re not terrified of the threat posed by rising levels of greenhouse gases, you’re not paying attention – which, sadly, many people aren’t. And those who are or should be aware of that threat, but stand in the way of action for the sake of short-term gain or political expediency, are in effect betraying humanity.
That said, the world’s failure to act on climate is inexcusable, but understandable. As many observers have pointed out, global warming is a problem that looks almost tailor-made to make political action difficult. In fact, the politics of climate change is difficult for at least four reasons.
First, when scientists started sounding the alarm in the 1980s, climate change seemed like a distant threat — a problem for future generations. Some people still see it that way; last month, a senior executive of the bank HSBC gave a talk in which he stated, “What difference does it make if Miami is six feet under water in 100 years?”
This view is all wrong — we already see the effects of climate change, largely in the form of an increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as the megadrought in the American West contributing to the death of the Great Salt Lake. But that’s a statistical argument, which brings me to the second problem with climate change: it’s not yet visible to the naked eye, at least the naked eye that doesn’t want to see.
The climate and the world are changing. What challenges will the future bring and how should we respond to them?
After all, the weather fluctuates. Heat waves and droughts occurred before the planet started warming; cold spells still occur even if the planet is warmer on average than in the past. It doesn’t take fancy analysis to show that there is an ongoing upward trend in temperatures, but many people are not convinced by statistical analysis of any kind, fancy or not, just by rough experience.
Then there’s the third problem: until recently, it seemed that any major effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would entail significant economic costs. Serious estimates of these costs have always been much lower than claimed by environmentalists, and spectacular technological advances in renewable energy have made the transition to a low-emission economy seem much easier than anyone could have imagined 15 years ago. Still, fears of economic losses helped block climate action.
Finally, climate change is a global problem that requires global action — and provides a reason not to move. Anyone pushing for US action has encountered the counterargument: “It doesn’t matter what we do, because China will just keep polluting.” There are answers to that argument – if we ever get serious about emissions, carbon tariffs will have to be part of the mix. But it is certainly an argument that influences the discussion.
As I said, all of these problems are explanations for climate inaction, not excuses. But here’s the thing: None of these environmental inactivity explanations apply to the Great Salt Lake’s death. However, the policy makers involved still seem unwilling or unable to act.
Remember, we’re not talking about bad things that could happen in the distant future: Much of the lake has already disappeared, and the extinction of major wildlife could begin as early as this summer. And it doesn’t take a statistical model to notice that it’s shrinking anymore.
In terms of economy, tourism is a huge industry in Utah. How will that industry fare when the famous lake becomes a poisoned desert? And how can a state on the brink of an ecological crisis still divert water so desperately needed to replenish the lake to preserve lush green lawns that serve no essential economic purpose?
Finally, we are not talking about a global problem. It’s true that global climate change has contributed to less snow, which is one of the reasons the Great Salt Lake has shrunk. But a big part of the problem is local water usage; if that consumption could be curbed, Utah wouldn’t have to worry about its efforts being nullified by the Chinese or whatever.
So this should be simple: an endangered region would have to make modest sacrifices, some barely more than inconveniences, to avoid disaster just around the corner. But it doesn’t seem to happen.
And if we can’t save the Great Salt Lake, what chance do we have to save the planet?