失去地球：我們幾乎阻止氣候變遷的十年
作者：納撒尼爾·里奇
攝影及影片：喬治‧史坦梅茨
2018年8月1日
編按
納撒尼爾·里奇的這篇敘事作品是一部歷史著作，講述了1979年至1989年的十年：人類首次對氣候變遷的成因和危害有了廣泛認識的關鍵十年。與正文相輔相成的是一系列空拍照片和視頻，均由喬治·斯坦梅茨在過去一年中拍攝。在普立茲中心的支持下，這篇由兩部分組成的文章是基於18個月的報道和超過一百次訪談。它追蹤了一小群美國科學家、活動家和政治家為發出警報、避免災難所做的努力。對許多讀者來說，這將是一個啟示——一個令人痛苦的啟示——去了解他們對問題的理解有多麼透徹，以及他們距離解決問題有多接近。傑克·西爾弗斯坦
序言
自工業革命以來，全球氣溫已上升超過攝氏1度。 2016年世界地球日簽署的《巴黎氣候協定》——這項不具約束力、無法執行且已被忽視的條約——希望將氣溫上升限制在攝氏2度以內。根據最近一項基於當前排放趨勢的研究，成功的幾率是二十分之一。如果我們能夠奇蹟般地將氣溫上升限制在攝氏2度以內，那麼我們只需要應對世界熱帶珊瑚礁的滅絕、海平面上升幾公尺以及波斯灣的廢棄。氣候科學家詹姆斯漢森稱攝氏2度的升溫是「長期災難的處方」。長期災難現在是最好的情況。 3攝氏度的升溫是短期災難的處方：北極的森林消失，大多數沿海城市消失。聯合國氣候變遷政府間小組前主任羅伯特‧沃森認為，攝氏3度是現實的最低限度。攝氏4度：歐洲將陷入永久乾旱；中國、印度和孟加拉的大片土地被沙漠吞沒；波利尼西亞被海水吞沒；科羅拉多河水流變細，只剩涓涓細流；美國西南部大部分地區已不再適宜居住。全球暖化五度的前景促使一些世界頂尖的氣候科學家發出人類文明終結的警告。
意識到我們本來可以避免這一切，這究竟是安慰還是詛咒？
因為在1979年至1989年的十年間，我們擁有解決氣候危機的絕佳機會。世界主要大國幾乎簽署協議，即將簽署一個具有約束力的全球碳排放減少框架——這比我們此後的進展要近得多。在那幾年裡，成功的條件極為有利。我們目前無所作為的障礙尚未出現。幾乎沒有什麼能阻擋我們──除了我們自己。
我們對全球暖化的幾乎所有理解都是在1979年形成的。到了那一年，自1957年以來收集的數據證實20世紀初人們已知的事實：人類透過無差別燃燒化石燃料改變地球大氣層。主要的科學問題已毋庸置疑地解決。進入1980年代，人們的注意力從對問題的診斷轉向了對預測後果的細化。與弦理論和基因工程相比，「溫室效應」——一個可以追溯到20世紀初的隱喻——已經是古老的歷史，任何一本《生物學導論》教科書都會提到。其基礎科學原理也不特別複雜。它可以簡化為一個簡單的公理：大氣中的二氧化碳越多，地球就越溫暖。而每年，透過燃燒煤炭、石油和天然氣，人類向大氣中排放的二氧化碳數量日益驚人。
我們為何不採取行動？如今，化石燃料產業成了一個常見的“妖怪”，近幾十年來，它一直以漫畫式的虛張聲勢扮演著反派角色。氣候文學的整個分支領域都記錄著行業遊說者的陰謀詭計、科學家的腐敗以及即使在大型石油天然氣公司早已放棄否認的愚蠢姿態之後，仍在持續貶低政治辯論的宣傳活動。但直到1989年底，這種旨在迷惑公眾的協同行動才真正開始。在此十年，包括埃克森美孚和殼牌在內的一些大型石油公司曾真誠地努力了解危機的嚴重程度，並努力尋找可能的解決方案。
共和黨也難辭其咎。如今，只有42%的共和黨人知道“大多數科學家認為全球暖化正在發生”，而且這一比例還在下降。但在1980年代，許多知名共和黨人與民主黨人一道，認為氣候議題是個罕見的政治贏家：它超越黨派，且事關重大。呼籲緊急、立即且影響深遠的氣候政策的人士包括參議員約翰·查菲、羅伯特·斯塔福德和大衛·杜倫伯格；環保署署長威廉·K·賴利；以及競選總統期間的喬治·H·W·布希。正如總統環境品質委員會代理主席馬爾科姆·福布斯·鮑德溫在1981年對行業高管所說的那樣：“沒有什麼比保護地球本身更重要、更保守的了。” 這個問題不容置疑，就像對退伍軍人或小企業的支持一樣。只不過，氣候議題擁有更廣泛的支持者，由地球上的每一個人組成。
大家都明白，必須立即採取行動。 1980年代初，聯邦政府的科學家預測，到2020年，全球氣溫紀錄中將出現確鑿的暖化證據，屆時災難將難以避免。超過30%的人口無法用電。數十億人無需達到「美國式生活方式」就能大幅增加全球碳排放；每個村莊都裝上一盞燈泡就足夠了。美國國家科學院應白宮要求編寫的一份報告建議，「二氧化碳問題應該在最大限度地促進合作與共識建設、最大限度地減少政治操縱、爭議和分裂的背景下，被提上國際議程。」 如果世界各國採納了80年代末得到廣泛認可的方案——凍結碳排放，到2005年減少20%，那麼全球變異性就可以控制在以下1.5攝氏度以下。
國際社會就一項解決方案達成了廣泛的共識：一項旨在遏制碳排放的全球條約。早在1979年2月於日內瓦舉行的首屆世界氣候大會上，這個想法就已開始凝聚。來自50個國家的科學家一致認為，採取行動「刻不容緩」。四個月後，在東京舉行的七國集團會議上，世界七個最富裕國家的領導人簽署了一份聲明，決心減少碳排放。十年後，首次在荷蘭召開的旨在批准具有約束力的條約框架的重要外交會議，來自60多個國家的代表出席了會議，目標是確定大約一年後舉行一次全球高峰會。科學家和世界各國領導人一致認為：必須採取行動，而美國需要發揮領導作用。然而，美國並沒有這麼做。
氣候變遷傳奇的開頭已經結束。在這一章——我們稱之為「憂慮」——中，我們辨識出了威脅及其後果。我們越來越急切地、自欺欺人地談論著戰勝渺茫困難的前景。但我們從未認真考慮過失敗的可能性。我們明白失敗對全球氣溫、海岸線、農業產量、移民模式和世界經濟意味著什麼。但我們卻沒有讓自己去理解失敗對自己意味著什麼。它將如何改變我們看待自己的方式，如何記憶過去，如何想像未來？我們為什麼要這樣對待自己？這些問題將成為氣候變遷第二章的主題——我們稱之為「清算」。如果我們不理解為什麼我們曾經有機會解決這個問題卻未能解決，就無法理解我們當前和未來的困境。
作為一個文明，我們如此接近打破與化石燃料的自殺協議，這可以歸功於少數人的努力，其中包括一位極度活躍的說客和一位坦率的大氣物理學家，他們付出了巨大的個人代價，試圖警告人類即將發生的事情。他們冒著職業生涯的風險，發起了一場痛苦且不斷升級的行動來解決這個問題。起初他們發表科學報告，後來透過傳統的政治勸說途徑，最後採取了公開羞辱的策略。他們的努力精明、熱情、堅定。但他們失敗了。接下來是他們的故事，也是我們的故事。
Losing Earth: The Decade We
Almost Stopped Climate Change
Editor’s Note
This narrative by Nathaniel Rich is a work of history, addressing the 10-year period from 1979 to 1989: the decisive decade when humankind first came to a broad understanding of the causes and dangers of climate change. Complementing the text is a series of aerial photographs and videos, all shot over the past year by George Steinmetz. With support from the Pulitzer Center, this two-part article is based on 18 months of reporting and well over a hundred interviews. It tracks the efforts of a small group of American scientists, activists and politicians to raise the alarm and stave off catastrophe. It will come as a revelation to many readers — an agonizing revelation — to understand how thoroughly they grasped the problem and how close they came to solving it. Jake Silverstein
Prologue
The world has warmed more than one degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution. The Paris climate agreement — the nonbinding, unenforceable and already unheeded treaty signed on Earth Day in 2016 — hoped to restrict warming to two degrees. The odds of succeeding, according to a recent study based on current emissions trends, are one in 20. If by some miracle we are able to limit warming to two degrees, we will only have to negotiate the extinction of the world’s tropical reefs, sea-level rise of several meters and the abandonment of the Persian Gulf. The climate scientist James Hansen has called two-degree warming “a prescription for long-term disaster.” Long-term disaster is now the best-case scenario. Three-degree warming is a prescription for short-term disaster: forests in the Arctic and the loss of most coastal cities. Robert Watson, a former director of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has argued that three-degree warming is the realistic minimum. Four degrees: Europe in permanent drought; vast areas of China, India and Bangladesh claimed by desert; Polynesia swallowed by the sea; the Colorado River thinned to a trickle; the American Southwest largely uninhabitable. The prospect of a five-degree warming has prompted some of the world’s leading climate scientists to warn of the end of human civilization.
Is it a comfort or a curse, the knowledge that we could have avoided all this?
Because in the decade that ran from 1979 to 1989, we had an excellent opportunity to solve the climate crisis. The world’s major powers came within several signatures of endorsing a binding, global framework to reduce carbon emissions — far closer than we’ve come since. During those years, the conditions for success could not have been more favorable. The obstacles we blame for our current inaction had yet to emerge. Almost nothing stood in our way — nothing except ourselves.
Nearly everything we understand about global warming was understood in 1979. By that year, data collected since 1957 confirmed what had been known since before the turn of the 20th century: Human beings have altered Earth’s atmosphere through the indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels. The main scientific questions were settled beyond debate, and as the 1980s began, attention turned from diagnosis of the problem to refinement of the predicted consequences. Compared with string theory and genetic engineering, the “greenhouse effect” — a metaphor dating to the early 1900s — was ancient history, described in any Introduction to Biology textbook. Nor was the basic science especially complicated. It could be reduced to a simple axiom: The more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the warmer the planet. And every year, by burning coal, oil and gas, humankind belched increasingly obscene quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Why didn’t we act? A common boogeyman today is the fossil-fuel industry, which in recent decades has committed to playing the role of villain with comic-book bravado. An entire subfield of climate literature has chronicled the machinations of industry lobbyists, the corruption of scientists and the propaganda campaigns that even now continue to debase the political debate, long after the largest oil-and-gas companies have abandoned the dumb show of denialism. But the coordinated efforts to bewilder the public did not begin in earnest until the end of 1989. During the preceding decade, some of the largest oil companies, including Exxon and Shell, made good-faith efforts to understand the scope of the crisis and grapple with possible solutions.
Nor can the Republican Party be blamed. Today, only 42 percent of Republicans know that “most scientists believe global warming is occurring,” and that percentage is falling. But during the 1980s, many prominent Republicans joined Democrats in judging the climate problem to be a rare political winner: nonpartisan and of the highest possible stakes. Among those who called for urgent, immediate and far-reaching climate policy were Senators John Chafee, Robert Stafford and David Durenberger; the E.P.A. administrator, William K. Reilly; and, during his campaign for president, George H.W. Bush. As Malcolm Forbes Baldwin, the acting chairman of the president’s Council for Environmental Quality, told industry executives in 1981, “There can be no more important or conservative concern than the protection of the globe itself.” The issue was unimpeachable, like support for veterans or small business. Except the climate had an even broader constituency, composed of every human being on Earth.
It was understood that action would have to come immediately. At the start of the 1980s, scientists within the federal government predicted that conclusive evidence of warming would appear on the global temperature record by the end of the decade, at which point it would be too late to avoid disaster. More than 30 percent of the human population lacked access to electricity. Billions of people would not need to attain the “American way of life” in order to drastically increase global carbon emissions; a light bulb in every village would do it. A report prepared at the request of the White House by the National Academy of Sciences advised that “the carbon-dioxide issue should appear on the international agenda in a context that will maximize cooperation and consensus-building and minimize political manipulation, controversy and division.” If the world had adopted the proposal widely endorsed at the end of the ’80s — a freezing of carbon emissions, with a reduction of 20 percent by 2005 — warming could have been held to less than 1.5 degrees.
A broad international consensus had settled on a solution: a global treaty to curb carbon emissions. The idea began to coalesce as early as February 1979, at the first World Climate Conference in Geneva, when scientists from 50 nations agreed unanimously that it was “urgently necessary” to act. Four months later, at the Group of 7 meeting in Tokyo, the leaders of the world’s seven wealthiest nations signed a statement resolving to reduce carbon emissions. Ten years later, the first major diplomatic meeting to approve the framework for a binding treaty was called in the Netherlands. Delegates from more than 60 nations attended, with the goal of establishing a global summit meeting to be held about a year later. Among scientists and world leaders, the sentiment was unanimous: Action had to be taken, and the United States would need to lead. It didn’t.
The inaugural chapter of the climate-change saga is over. In that chapter — call it Apprehension — we identified the threat and its consequences. We spoke, with increasing urgency and self-delusion, of the prospect of triumphing against long odds. But we did not seriously consider the prospect of failure. We understood what failure would mean for global temperatures, coastlines, agricultural yield, immigration patterns, the world economy. But we have not allowed ourselves to comprehend what failure might mean for us. How will it change the way we see ourselves, how we remember the past, how we imagine the future? Why did we do this to ourselves? These questions will be the subject of climate change’s second chapter — call it The Reckoning. There can be no understanding of our current and future predicament without understanding why we failed to solve this problem when we had the chance.
That we came so close, as a civilization, to breaking our suicide pact with fossil fuels can be credited to the efforts of a handful of people, among them a hyperkinetic lobbyist and a guileless atmospheric physicist who, at great personal cost, tried to warn humanity of what was coming. They risked their careers in a painful, escalating campaign to solve the problem, first in scientific reports, later through conventional avenues of political persuasion and finally with a strategy of public shaming. Their efforts were shrewd, passionate, robust. And they failed. What follows is their story, and ours.
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