Today’s Climate Change Scientists, Tomorrow’s “I Told You So” Prophets.

The mobilization of the American people to solve a national crisis during World War II was an unprecedented and phenomenal occurrence. Never before or since have the American people sacrificed so many daily comforts in order to overcome a national threat. The story is moving and is justifiably looked to for inspiration for solving today’s problems. Accordingly, it is fair to ask, what was it that caused Americans to act together with such unanimity and purpose? What would it take to get them to act in such a manner again? And, could those efforts be duplicated and spread on an international scale?

Not surprisingly, it was no small impetus that pushed individual Americans to sacrifice for the greater good of the nation. For years World War II was developing in Europe and Eastern Asia and for years it was being fought in those places without Americans making any sort of sacrifice. Why not? Because as desperate and real as WWII was abroad, it was not yet desperate and real in the US.

That all changed with Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor, far more than any attack on Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, or any of the Pacific Islands brought home the reality that Americans could be harmed by the Japanese and Germans. American soldiers and citizens actually died during the attack! Clearly it was a sign of what was yet to come if America remained indifferent. Pushed by the dramatic clarification Pearl Harbor brought, change came to America. As US soldiers marched off to war, parents, grandparents and younger siblings faced the undeniable reality for the first time that their loved ones might die, and that if their beloved soldiers failed, they themselves might be at risk. Suddenly sacrifice became very desirable. Indeed, it ceased to be a sacrifice at all and rather became many daily acts of self-preservation from a very real, “clear and present danger.”

Just as WWII is instructive in teaching us what it took to get people to sacrifice for the greater good, it is also instructive in teaching us about what it would take to get people to do so again. The obvious answer is that it would take another impetus as immediate, as desperate and as seemingly real as the attack on Pearl Harbor. After all, Hitler’s rise and the rise of Japanese aggression were not done in a corner. They were big news for years and years. Why didn’t Americans act on them earlier, before they got so far out of hand? The reasons are numerous and varied: they include the hope that appeasement would work, that somebody else would deal with it and the imagination that the problem could never reach them (protected as they were by two vast oceans). All of these reasons, and others, turned out to be wrong, but the lesson we learn about human behavior is that up until the moment some danger becomes undeniably real and threatens the end of our expected form of life as we know it right now, people will continue to ignore it.

We learn yet another lesson from World War II. As destructive and widespread as its effects were, not every nation in the world chose to involve itself. Although Canada and South Africa did send soldiers to the fray even though they were not directly involved, they were the exception rather than the rule. Many other countries, unless they were directly threatened by one power or another, chose not to get involved. And, can we really blame them? Who would want to feed their youth to the machine guns and poison gas if they didn’t have to? And, could you really expect the Guatemalan government to boat soldiers over to Europe when its entire population lived below the poverty line?

What does all of this have to with climate change in the world today? A lot. Climate scientists often fail to remember that although their models are great at capturing changes that have happened in the world’s climate over the past 200 years, and might be scarily prescient at predicting what will happen to the world’s climate in the future, those models don’t assess or predict the human response. That is the realm of historians and sociologists, and our case study of World War II is a perfect example of what it will take for humanity to stir itself to action in regards to climate change. Winston Churchill correctly predicted the danger Hitler posed to the world but nobody listened until German tanks rolled into Poland. It will be the same with climate scientists: their predictions will come true, but the citizens of the world will not take action on them till those predictions are undeniably proven in their individual minds and their forms of life as they know it are threatened with a serious risk of extinction.

In this arena, climate scientists are faced with three challenges common to prophets of destruction. First, many people view climate change as a hoax and see climate scientists as false prophets. Those scientists can welcome themselves into the company of Isaiah and Jeremiah, if that’s any consolation. Second, many people believe that while climate change may be taking place, it won’t be that bad. To paraphrase one religion’s book of scripture, they think, “Eat, drink, and be merry … and if it so be that we are guilty, [climate change] will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of [some new climate]” (2 Nephi 28: 8). Finally, there are those that believe that although climate change is indeed happening, its affects will be mitigated by technological developments that combat the effects of climate change without targeting its causes. After all, Holland has been pumping water out of its lowlands for years. All we need is more pumps…

Predictably, climate scientists are enraged by such thinking. They rightly point out that climate change is happening, that its effects will be very bad and that no technological developments can mitigate its effects if the causes aren’t targeted. They rightly prophesy the widespread destruction threatening the globe if no action is taken to reduce the continued production of greenhouse gasses.

What is truly aggravating, however, is that climate scientists continue to think that their self-righteous campaign of crying, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” will actually work. While Chicken Little is actually right this time, and the sky will fall if nothing is done about climate change, the people they’re yelling it to won’t believe them until it is too late. Just as Americans and every one else didn’t engage in WWII until there was no possibility of denying the danger that was at their doorsteps, the world’s population won’t act on reversing the effects of climate change until it is too late to turn back the natural processes we’ve started. To paraphrase scripture again for our purposes, “as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of [the effects of climate change be.] For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the [the effects of climate change be] (Matthew 24: 37-39).

As gloomy as this picture is, it sadly represents the truth. What is to be done then? Should climate scientists, like Jeremiah, Ecclesiastes and John the Revelator sadly predict and then detail the destruction of their people? And maybe buy some real estate above 5,000 feet? If all they want to do is play the part of the “I told you so” prophets, the answer is yes.

On the other hand, if they really would like to save the world, there is a way. It would require them to abandon the role of martyrs and to engage in a lot of hard work, but it is possible and scientists can lead the way. And, they can also benefit more than they can possibly imagine if they choose to adopt this strategy rather than the former.

The scientists’ salvation of the world would have to take place in three steps.

Step one: scientists have to unite. Yes, as we’ve heard a billion times before, all credible scientists believe in climate change, but as of yet they still haven’t united behind one plan to fight against it. Some say we ought to do one thing and some say another. While many of their debates on what the best course of action is are credible they fail to recognize that while they’re debating the world is just getting warmer. It makes one wonder if they’ve forgotten the saying, “the worst action is inaction.” Whatever scientists may disagree on, they have to agree to act together and to start acting together soon!

Step two: scientists have to abandon their “convince the world campaign.” The way scientists are going about trying to tell people that the world is coming to an end right now is a marketer’s worst nightmare. One day one scientist is talking on this talk show, the next another is testifying before congress, and the next day a professor is going off on a tangent in his university course. There is absolutely no consistency! There is absolutely no clearly defined target audience! There is absolutely no clearly defined message trying to be delivered to a clearly defined target audience! And, perhaps worst of all, the scientists talk in such technical terms that are so incomprehensible to the average person they’re trying to convince that people either can’t understand it or they’re unwilling to try. As one of my marketing professors would say, the climate scientists have forgotten that you have to convince people with kitchen logic (i.e. something an average housewife could understand) and not with technical terminology.

If scientists, with their limited manpower and resources really want to save the world from the effects of climate change, they’ll have to identify a target audience they think are the most important people in the world that they need to convince, they’ll have to deliver a clearly defined and consistent message to that target audience, and they’ll have to make sure that message is delivered in understandable, convincing terminology.

Step three: scientists have to come up with and execute a plan that makes reversing the effects of climate change “easy and simple.” A full discussion of what “easy and simple” means can be found in a previous article of mine entitled Easy and Normal: What Food, Literacy, Transportation and Social Networking have to do with Healthcare in America (available at http://supelillywhite.blogspot.com/2011/09/easy-and-normal-what-food-literacy.html ). For now, however, a simple example will have to suffice.

50 years ago, the idea that someday every American could have access to a computer that would allow them to type and edit documents, send electronic mail, shop without moving from their homes and do the host of other things our computers do now days would have been unbelievable. Now, it is such a part of our reality that the idea of such things not being available is laughable! What happened to make the change? Well, first I’ll tell you what didn’t happen. Computer specialists did not go out and tell everybody that we all needed to come together to build computers, they did not try to convince congress that building computers was the most pressing task they could possibly involve themselves in, and they did not harass and belittle anybody that thought it was worthwhile to concentrate on things other than computers. Instead, they took the computers of yesteryear from enormous, building-filling machines that were little more than glorified calculators, and progressively worked on them until they fit in a small building, in a house, in a room and finally in the palm of our hands. Those specialists took something that seemed impossible to attain and attained it in less than 50 years! And, best of all, they made using computers, something that before only the specialists themselves could master, and made it so my three year old nephew can navigate one with ease. Today the thought of not using a computer to do so many of our daily, routine tasks is ludicrous because they are so much simpler and easier to use than the alternatives.

Now, if a group of unaffiliated computer specialists working with no set goals could realize so much in 50 years, what could a group of highly trained, highly intelligent, united and motivated climate scientists accomplish if they wanted to? General Motors, Ford and other companies really have no motivation to make clean running cars. They, like all other publicly owned companies, are fixated on achieving high quarterly profits, which are best obtained by producing what works. Even though inventing and producing green cars might save the world, R&D costs and retooling factories would erode the profits of next quarter.

Climate scientists, on the other hand, could target the right people to help them in their quest and then build green cars together. And, if they set their goals on making green cars so easy to use and so cheap to buy, and not to simply attain a quarterly profit, sooner rather than later they would reach their goals. Also, as soon as they demonstrated that it was possible to produce green cars and other green technologies that would turn the tide on greenhouse gas emissions, and that it was possible to do so for less money and better efficiency than older technologies, every other company on Earth would follow suit. Soon, it would be so easy, simple and cheap to use green technology that nobody would think of doing otherwise.

Are any of you climate scientists out there shaking your heads? Does this sound like too much work? Does it sound like you’re unfairly being singled out? Are you upset that it is suddenly your job to save the world? Poor babies. But, just remember, you’re trying to save the world right now anyway and it’s not working. And, the way you’re going about it right now won’t ever work before it’s too late. So, the choice is yours: you can either choose to be tomorrow’s “I told you so” prophets that watch the world crumble with everyone else, or you can choose to dedicate your life to helping create and produce the technologies that will save humanity and the world. Just remember that although people still read Isaiah, they prefer the prophet Moses that led people to the promised land.

Supe Lillywhite

PS. Did I mention that although climate scientists that embrace the course of action I propose don’t get to say I told you so, they do herald in a technological revolution and become the leaders of industrial tomorrow? Something to think about.