Global recession could worsen global warming
— -- Hopes that humankind will deal with Earth's changing climate are in danger of being dashed by the ongoing " Great Recession."
Under the onslaught of the financial crisis, some European nations have turned skittish on forcing limits in heat-trapping "greenhouse" gas emissions. And stateside, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, has complained that "middle-class families are struggling during this recession," in objecting to similar plans to cap emissions.
But the financial meltdown may make the case for addressing global warming stronger, says Eugene Linden, author of Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations. A former Time magazine science writer, Linden alternates authoring with a part-time job at a hedge fund, making him the rare environmental writer on Wall Street. He spoke in April at a University of Illinois conference called "Planet U." on "What the Financial Crisis has to teach us about Climate Change."
"Climate has been our long and moody companion," Linden says. "When it's nice, it's nice. When it's not, it's a serial killer." Anyone worried about pink slips these days could be forgiven for feeling the same way about the economy, he says.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected a roughly 7-degree Fahrenheit rise in average global atmospheric temperatures by 2100 under "business as usual" rates of greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gases, notably the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil, are transparent to sunlight, but trap heat in the atmosphere.
"The continuing global economic crisis has once again shoved the climate crisis to the back burner," Linden notes. But "it provides a useful analogy that helps us understand the paralysis on climate change. It also provides a useful analogue to how things might play out."
Among the similarities, he sees:
•In the financial crisis, toxic assets on bank books — bum loans — were released into the financial system. In climate, greenhouse gases are piling up, raising the risks of abrupt climate change.
