Opinion – Paul Krugman: What a dying lake says about the future

A few days ago, the Times ran a story about the Great Salt Lake drought. [em português, grande lago salgado, localizado em Utah, nos EUA], a story I am ashamed to admit has slipped under my personal radar. We’re not talking about a hypothetical event in the distant future: the lake has already lost two-thirds of its surface area, and ecological disasters seem imminent: salinity rising to the point where wildlife dies, occasional poisonous dust storms sweeping through a metropolitan area of 2.5 million people.

In fact, I was a little surprised that the article didn’t mention the obvious parallels with the Aral Sea, a huge lake that the Soviet Union managed to turn into a toxic wasteland.

Anyway, what’s happening with the Great Salt Lake is pretty bad. But what I found really scary about the report is what the lack of an effective response to the lake crisis says about our ability to respond to the larger, indeed existential threat, of climate change.

If you’re not terrified of the threat posed by rising levels of greenhouse gases, you’re not paying attention — which, unfortunately, many people aren’t. And those who are or should be aware of this threat, but prevent a reaction because of short-term profits or political expediency, are, in a real sense, betraying humanity.

That said, the world’s failure to act on climate, while unforgivable, is also understandable. As many observers have noted, global warming is a problem that seems tailor-made to hamper political action. In fact, climate change policies are difficult for at least four reasons.

First, when scientists started raising the alarm in the 1980s, climate change seemed like a distant threat, a problem for future generations. Some people still see her that way; last month, a senior executive at HSBC bank gave a speech in which he declared, “Who cares if Miami is twenty feet underwater a hundred years from now?”

This view is dead wrong – we are already seeing the effects of climate change, largely in the form of the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as the mega-drought in the American West that is contributing to the death of the Great Salt Lake. But that’s a statistical argument, which leads me to the second problem with climate change: it’s still not visible to the naked eye, at least to the naked eye that doesn’t want to see.

After all, the weather fluctuates. Heat waves and droughts were already happening before the planet started to warm up; cold spells still occur even with the planet warmer on average than in the past. It doesn’t take sophisticated analysis to show that there is a persistent tendency for temperatures to rise, but many people are not convinced by statistical analysis of any kind, refined or not, just by raw experience.

Then there’s the third problem: until recently, it seemed that any major attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would have significant economic costs. Serious estimates of these costs have always been far lower than those claimed by anti-environmentalists, and spectacular technological progress in renewable energy has made the transition to a low-emissions economy seem far easier than anyone could have imagined 15 years ago. Still, fears about economic losses have helped to block climate action.

Finally, climate change is a global problem, one that requires global action – and offers a reason not to move. Anyone demanding US action has found the counter-argument: “No matter what we do, China will continue to pollute.” There are answers to that argument – ​​if we are ever going to take emissions seriously, carbon tariffs will have to be part of the mix. But it is certainly an argument that affects the discussion.

As I said, all these issues are explanations for climate inaction, not excuses. But the thing is, none of these explanations for environmental inaction apply to the death of the Great Salt Lake. Yet the policymakers that matter still seem reluctant or unable to act.

Remember, we’re not talking about bad things that could happen in the distant future. Much of the lake is gone, and the great kill of wildlife could start as early as this summer. And you don’t need a statistical model to see that the lake is shrinking.

In economic terms, tourism is a huge industry in Utah. What will this industry look like if the famous lake becomes a poisoned desert? And how can a state on the brink of ecological crisis still be diverting desperately needed water to replenish the lake to maintain lush green lawns that serve no essential economic purpose?

Finally, we are not talking about a global problem. It’s true that global climate change has contributed to reduced snowfall, which is one of the reasons the Great Salt Lake has shrunk. But much of the problem is local water consumption; if that consumption could be contained, Utah wouldn’t have to worry about its efforts being snubbed by the Chinese or anything else.

So it should be easy: a threatened region must accept modest sacrifices, little more than inconvenience, to avoid disaster just around the corner. But it seems that this is not happening.

And if we can’t save the Great Salt Lake, what chance do we have of saving the planet?

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves