Our Opinion: A climate for change

Posted Saturday, August 30, 2014 10:13 pm

Modest efforts to confront human-caused global warming are being overwhelmed by the pace of climate change, according to a draft of a major United Nations report to be released this fall. This conclusion is hardly surprising given what was already known. What would be surprising if there was meaningful reaction to it not sabotaged by politics.

A copy of the draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was obtained by The New York Times, and while the report could change in the weeks ahead there is no reason to believe it will. The report is consistent with past conclusions by the panel, which is composed of scientists and environmental specialists from around the globe. Its conclusion that human influence on climate through the burning of greenhouse gases has led to higher sea levels, more dramatic and destructive storms, devastating heat waves, melting ice caps and declines in grain production is supported scientifically and anecdotally. The report’s warning of "severe, pervasive, and irreversible" impacts of warming in the years and decades ahead should alarm anyone who lives on the face of the overheated planet.

But what do scientists know? Climate change deniers claim without evidence that scientists are engaged in a nefarious conspiracy to falsify global warming evidence, which assumes that scientists the world over are unethical and able to keep such a plot secret. That the presence of a conspiracy cannot be disproven deniers take as evidence of the conspiracy. The deniers are aligned with the know-nothings who disparage science on principle and would take us back to the pre-Galileo era if they were able.

China, which has long been fouling its waterways and suffocating its city residents, is finally starting to take pollution seriously, and even a partial mending of its ways would have an impact. China’s predicament testifies to the value of the many environmental regulations passed by Congress, signed by presidents and enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency that are now under assault by right-wing extremists in the United States.

Climate change, based as it is on science, should be impervious to politics, but in today’s brutally partisan atmosphere, climate change is perceived as a Democratic issue -- worse, an Obama issue -- and generates knee-jerk opposition from tea partiers and otherwise sensible Republicans who are afraid of tea partiers. The president -- portrayed alternatively as a weakling and a tyrant by foes -- is pilloried for taking executive actions on environmental issues like global warming, even though his actions are constitutional and follow the precedent of other chief executives, Democratic and Republican. With congressional Republicans paralyzed by partisanship, the president would be remiss if he did not take executive action on a problem that impacts every American.

The report offers a modest note of hope in observing that climate change is being addressed increasingly at the local and regional level across the world. Massachusetts has been ahead of the curve for years in addressing climate change and ideally that will continue when Governor Deval Patrick hands over the reins in January.

Coastal states and cities like Boston and New York are taking preventive measures by adopting construction methods and zoning regulations that anticipate rising sea levels and the loss of coastal land, but while necessary, a far more aggressive approach is needed. That requires political will, a spirit of compromise, and a respect for scientific acumen that used to be fundamental to America before ignorance came to be regarded as a virtue. That is a lot to ask, but denying the reality of climate change won’t stem the tides, preserve the glaciers or quiet the storms.