An environmental ethicist asks:

 Which is worse — global warming or the Gulf gusher?

June 24, 2010

Although the BP oil spill seriously threatens those who live along the Gulf of Mexico, U.S. intransigence on climate change threatens the entire world; a fact that is causing rising anger around the world. Yet the U.S. Congress continues to resist action on climate change on the basis that it will harm some U.S. economic interests, while ignoring our duties, responsibilities, and obligations to others to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to the U.S. fair share of safe global releases.  For this reason, while the BP oil spill can be rightfully be understood as a disaster, U.S. Congressional inaction on climate change must be understood as a huge moral failure leading to an even greater disaster.

Our guest blogger today is Donald A. Brown is Associate Professor for Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law at Penn State. He blogs at ClimateEthics.
Over the last two months the U.S. Congress has been engaged in a great operatic drama over what many have called the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history:  The BP Gulf oil spill.  Last week U.S Congressman angrily grilled BP CEO spokesman Tony Hayward about the causes of the disaster and BPs inability to shut off the oil flow. As this took place, the brown and orange slick continued its daily assault on fisheries, birds, and livelihoods.
Although oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform site may in fact be creating the greatest environmental and economic harm in U.S. history so far, there is new evidence that another looming environmental problem is likely to produce far worse environmental and economic impacts not only for the United States but also for some of the poorest people around the world.  It is also a problem about which the U.S. Congress has done nothing for twenty years: human-induced climate change.
While the US focuses on the Gulf tragedy, climate change causing greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere at ever more dangerous rates. This past week the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that  by the end of May atmospheric concentrations of the chief greenhouse gas CO2 had reached an all-time high for at least 2.1 million years, 392.94 parts per million (ppm).
NOAA also announced that May continued a streak that is making this year, 2010, the hottest year on record so far from January through the end of May.  Globally the May temperatures was 0.99°F above the 20th century average of 61.3° making it the hottest May on record.
As the globe has been experiencing record heat during the spring of 2010, floodwaters that have been predicted by climate change science are wreaking havoc in many world-wide locations.  Disastrous flooding was experienced this spring in France where flash floods hit the back hills of the French Riviera and turned streets into rivers of surging, muddy water. The death toll from the flooding has risen to 25. In Myanmar and Bangladesh, floods and landslides triggered by incessant monsoon rains have killed more than 100 people. China has also experienced devastating flooding this year as well as Brazil. In the United States, flooding in Texas, Nebraska and Wyoming has caused massive damage to farms and homes. Although science can’t say that all of these flooding events are directly attributable to human-causation, this type of extreme flooding is predicted by climate change science [and human-caused warming tends to make deluges worse].
Climate change not only threatens more people, animals, and ecological systems around  the world than the Gulf spill; it promises to be a problem that will continually wreck havoc for centuries while harming  the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people with drought, floods, killer storms, rising sea levels, and vector borne disease.
BP may shut down the oil gusher in the Gulf by the end of the summer, yet the harms from human-induced climate change will likely plague the world for centuries. While the threat from the BP gusher to the wild life in the Gulf is huge, the threat to people, animals, and ecological systems from climate change is much larger.
While it is proving difficult to shut down the oil flow from the Deepwater Horizon site, the magnitude of greenhouse gas emissions reductions needed to prevent dangerous climate change is truly civilization challenging.  This is so because the world will need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions from current levels by 80% or greater by the middle of  this century to prevent catastrophic climate change as greenhouse gas emissions increase world wide increase at 2% per year under current trends.
Yet, some of the members of the U.S. Congress that are outraged at BP have been resisting meaningful action on climate change. In fact the U.S. Congress has been a barrier to responsible U.S. climate change action since the early 1990s.
There are a few things in common about the Gulf spill and climate change.  One lesson of the Gulf oil spill that is an ominous warning about climate change is that the Deepwater Horizon disaster demonstrates that what are often initially believed to be low probability, catastrophic impacts do happen.
Although even more optimistic predictions of climate change impacts are disastrous for some of the world’s most vulnerable people, the upper end of possible human-induced temperature increases in this Century of 9 to 16 F will be catastrophic and perhaps unimaginable for the world.
Also, some of the U.S. Congressmen who have consistently fought stronger government climate change action have also promoted rapid expansion of deep sea oil drilling. It is also no mere coincidence that most of these Congressmen are also from oil states and  are the greatest recipients of  fossil-fuel industry political contributions.
Although the BP oil spill seriously threatens those who live along the Gulf of Mexico, U.S. intransigence on climate change threatens the entire world; a fact that is causing rising anger around the world. Yet the U.S. Congress continues to resist action on climate change on the basis that it will harm some U.S. economic interests, while ignoring our duties, responsibilities, and obligations to others to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to the U.S. fair share of safe global releases.  For this reason, while the BP oil spill can be rightfully be understood as a disaster, U.S. Congressional inaction on climate change must be understood as a huge moral failure leading to an even greater disaster.
– Donald A. Brown