Expert Warns of Climate Change

In the shadow of melting Alpine glaciers, Professor of Biological Oceanography James J. McCarthy spent 10 days in Geneva hammering out a landmark statement of the dangers that humans face due to global climate change.

McCarthy has played a crucial role in helping translate the increasingly complicated scientific research on climate change for policymakers and other non-scientists.

The sole chair of the 100-nation meeting, McCarthy spent nearly every waking moment for four days listening to objections and modifications to a 22-page summary for policymakers that warns of more extreme weather, more serious outbreaks of infectious diseases and increasing stress on already poor agricultural areas in parts of the developing world.

After marathon sessions that left him with an average of four hours of sleep per night, McCarthy closed the session with an 8 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. final push.

"It's the most intense interaction I've ever had with a large group of people," he says. "I used to joke that the biggest problem with chairing a meeting is that you can't nod off. Well, in this situation...you had to show at all times that you were fully attentive and respectful."

The report, which made headlines and news reports across the world, is based upon the scientific work of more than 400 authors and the full report runs to about 1,000 pages.

It cites "shrinkage of glaciers, thawing of permafrost, later freezing and earlier break-up of ice on rivers and lake, and poleward and altitudinal shifts of plant and animal ranges" as evidence of a change in global climate.

The report makes one point very clear: global warming will have devastating effects on developing countries, with serious reverberations for industrialized countries.

These climate changes are irreversible in the short term, and humans will have to learn to cope with their consequences.

McCarthy says one of the most important messages that comes from the report is that "we must begin now to anticipate what some of these effects will be and prepare adaptation strategies to minimize the loss of life, livelihood and property that will otherwise be a certain consequence of this."

He stresses that humans have already changed the climate significantly and prospects for reducing or reversing human impact on the climate are slim.

During the last two weeks, McCarthy has become a scientific celebrity for his work in bridging the gap between science and policy.

At Harvard, he also serves as Pforzheimer House Master and Director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology.

The kind of work he did in Geneva is not new territory for him.

In the 1980s, for example, McCarthy founded the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles and served as the head of the International Geophere Biosphere Program, one of the first organizations that sought to coordinate the study of global climate change. His most current work is along similar lines.

The recent report was released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an organization that works under the auspices of the U.N. but is run by independent scientists and receives its money directly from participating governments.

Its first report, released in January, called the "Working Group I" report, focused on the scientific evidence that climate change is occurring.

The recently released report, the "Working Group II" report, which McCarthy chaired, details the impacts of climate change and the areas where humans will have to adapt to the changing climate.

The "Working Group III Report," which has not yet been approved, will discuss strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change.

In an interview last week, two days after his return from Switzerland, McCarthy spoke frankly about the implications of his report and the political overtones of any discussion of the reasons and responses to climate change.

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The Harvard Crimson: Can you explain the scope of the report and its title, "Impacts, Adaptations, and Vulnerability" in everyday terms?

McCarthy: The impact part is probably pretty clear. You can think of it almost as the 'So what?' question. Work Group I says the climate has changed and it's mostly due in the last 50 years to human activity...the climate will become more variable. More extreme events, more heavy precipitation events, more hot spells, more dry spells, stronger winds. Then we deal with what you could call in the vernacular 'So why should I care? What will be the effects?'

The climate changes that are going to be most devastating lie largely in the tropical and sub-tropical regions. But even in a country like the U.S., if you look at a hot spell like the one a few summers ago in Chicago, hundreds of people died. Those people were not people like you or me, they were elderly, infirm, who could not afford to buy or maybe even turn on an air-conditioner or a fan.

Even in a country like the U.S., you have an increasing proportion of the population that is vulnerable to these extremes in climate.

That's part of our message: that no nation or region can take comfort in the fact that they are prepared for this--even in the regions that are less affected, there will be a larger portion of the population than there is now vulnerable to these changes.

THC: Do you think it will be difficult to persuade developed nations to make changes to their carbon dioxide emissions or forestry practices given that the most serious impacts are probably going to be in developing nations?

McCarthy: That's not at all an uncommon mindset. Many of the models show that while agricultural capability is failing in parts of the tropical and sub-tropical regions, it may actually be benefited by these climate changes in parts of North America and in northern Europe. Now who could gain from that? Will the farmers gain, will the merchants of grains gain, if the people who really need the food are without resources to by it? How do you see that being globally beneficial to anyone?

It was interesting that many of the European newspapers in their lead stories on Tuesday, the day I was returning from Geneva, were calling attention to the potential of environmental refugees. In other words, as people in parts of the tropics and subtropics find that they can no longer sustain their livelihood, the direction to move will be pole-ward, away from the tropics and subtropics. Now you run into some pretty skinny land areas as you go south, so the migration paths of environmental refugees will be northward.

The question of the role that climate disruption will play in national unrest and regional strife in an increasingly interesting question. I believe that any scenario for international relations a few decades into the century will have to take into consideration the impacts there.

THC: In the talks on the Kyoto Protocol in the Netherlands in November, the negotiations in the end were unsuccessful because the EU and the U.S. could not agree to limits on greenhouse gasses. Do you think that this sort of disagreement will become more or less common in light of the documented possibilities of climate change?

McCarthy: I personally am optimistic about future resolution of the commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. I can roll the clock back a year and a half, when there was discussion of putting off the sixth conference of the parties that was held in The Hague for two reasons. One was [that] our reports were not going to be out. And the second was the U.S. election. However, when people thought about it, they said, 'We'll know pretty well what's in your report even though it won't be finalized and after all the U.S. election will have occurred, so we'll know who the president is going to be.'

That didn't happen. The conference concluded before it was known who the new president was going to be. And I honestly believe that had we known the outcome of the election at the time the conference began, the results would have been different. To accept the bargaining positions of an administration that may or may not have any influence at all on its successor is a very awkward situation in the end. To really strike a deal, you have to trust the future administration to get it through Congress and deliver.

Q: Of the main points of the report, what are the most serious or upsetting for you?

I guess I could say three. One, that we're already seeing effects of climate change of the last half-century in natural and human systems. It has been seriously changing habitats and affecting human systems. Secondly, the fact that we now know with a high degree of confidence that the climate of the future will be more variable. And there's not any good news in extreme events. You can say, 'It will be a little warmer and it might be good or bad, less ski time and more beach time.' You can rationalize it. But extreme events are inherently disruptive. If you look over the last handful of years, it's the extreme events that have been so devastating.

Then I think the third message is this one of adaptation. We talked about it, but now it is so clear that your generation is going to have to be very attentive to the need to develop adaptive capacity in every nation or people who are not today perhaps vulnerable to the climate who will be in the future due to rising seas levels and storm surges, many coastal areas will

be vulnerable in ways they never have been before.

One of the forecasts is that the interior of continents will dry out. There are huge areas in the interior of continents from which people are going to be displaced because of this desertification.

Basically all these three messages are new, within the last five years. The evidence for each of these has gone from tentative to unambiguous. This was the message we took to the delegates, and at the end of the day all 100 [nations] approved this report.

THC: Do you think there's any room for more laws that mandate changes to current emissions practices?

McCarthy: I'm a bit cynical about any of us, individuals, industries, nations, doing the right thing here if it's all voluntary and particularly since in this area, we don't have the market pressure because of the inexpensive nature of fuel. Sometimes it takes the guiding hand of government to say, 'You may not think you can do it, but we can make you try awfully hard.'

THC: Do you think people in developed nations, in developing nations and in the small nations that night be submerged if the icecaps melt more will be able to come to a consensus or an agreement on combatting climate change in the near future?

McCarthy: That's one of the really tricky things and that's what the Senate weighed in on a couple years ago, in 1997, opposing any agreements at Kyoto that did not include developing nations. It is a fact that if you look at all these scenarios of future climate change, the increased rate of population growth is much greater in the developing than in the developed nations. The desire to increase standard of living in the developing nations is something we have to respect. So if you let those scenarios unfold, you move a few decades into this century before you see the developing nations becoming a larger contributor in terms of global emissions of greenhouse gasses.

I really am optimistic. I personally do not believe that Mr. Bush, if he wants to be reelected, and I presume he's thinking about that right now, can be reelected without taking this issue on. I believe that there is a strategy that his administration could unfold here, one that embraces industry, gets their concerns and provides incentives for industry. He can say, 'Look, I came to Washington campaigning that I knew how to lead and cut across partisan bickering and bring people together. The previously administration said they cared dearly about this issue but they were totally unable to lead. I'll show you how with their issue, I can lead.' The script is there. The man could play this. He could have an enormous international success without alienating people who supported him.

Q: What would President Bush's friends in the oil industry think of this?

McCarthy: The major oil companies have it in their vested interest now to be in the energy business, broadly defined. And there are going to be some ruffles.

I personally think that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is not a good idea. There's no incentive for conservation right now. Now, I know Alaska very well and I know that they are desperate in Alaska for sources of taxes. That economy is heavily based on the flow of oil and it's running out. So no one pays taxes, no one wants to give up their gift from the state every year and they need more oil--that's the way they look at it. There are two powerful senators from Alaska. You have a president and vice president with long histories in oil. The chief of staff, Andrew Card, used to be a lobbyist for Detroit. But I'm not pessimistic.