Global Warming: As Machiavelli May Have Seen It

By Bob Difley

As we writers, bloggers, pundits, and blowviators do, we would like to think our words carry such pithy weight as to enthral our readers with our wisdom and to emulate our actions. Failing that, as we most often do, I would like to quote a passage from The Prince by Machiavelli (Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli [1469 – 1527], Italian political philosopher and diplomat of the Rennaisance Period) that seems to address just the situation we are now in regarding alternative energy and global warming. Think about it.

“It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in introducing a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents–who have the laws on their side–and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.”

Tom Friedman used that quote in his book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded to explain today’s political difficulties in moving our society off fossil fuels and into a new age of clean energy. He also defines the three stages of denial, adapted to global warming (GM):(1) Those who deny that GM exists, and that man could not possibly change Mother Nature, (2) Those who say that global climate change is natural and normal, and it is no big deal and we will adapt to it, and (3) Those that agree that man-made GW is occuring but there is nothing we can do about it.
Attention deniers of all levels: There is still hope–and time–for you to take a second look at the facts and studies and opinions of the world’s climate scientists and consider the possibility that there might, in fact, be some substance to the global warming concept. For instance, that carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has been 280 ppm for the last 10,000 years, except that the level has been climbing since the Industrial Age and now stands at about 384 ppm–where it has never been for 20 million years. And we are on track to add another 100 ppm in the next 50 years. Just ask the question: Is that level safe for our grandchildren? No one knows, but scientists can make some educated guesses. But think about this: Humans have never before lived in a world with that level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Last, consider this strong statement that Friedman quotes from John Holdren, professor of environmental policy at Harvard, director of the Woods Hole Research Center, and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science: “The most important conclusions about global climatic disruption–that it’s real, that it’s accelerating, that it’s already doing significant harm, that human activities are responsible for most of it, that tipping points into really catastrophic disruption likely lurk along the ‘business as usual’ trajectory, and that there is much that could be done to reduce the danger at affordable cost if only we would get started–have not been concocted by the Sierra Club or the enemies of capitalism. They are based on an immense edifice of painstaking studies published in the world’s leading peer-reviewed scientific journals. They have been vetted and documented in excruciating detail by the largest, longest, costliest, most international, most interdisciplinary, and most thorough formal review of a scientific topic ever conducted.”