Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

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218 postscript: a disclosure
either Tennessee or Arkansas without getting his feet wet. Water to
cool power plants stressed by high demands for air-conditioning
was in short supply. Driving across the Midwest in August, I read
newspaper stories of shootings over trivial arguments in which
heat was said to be a factor. Scientist James Hansen testifi ed to
Congress that summer, saying that the nation was seeing the fi rst
tangible evidence of climate change. Climate skeptics greeted his
testimony with scorn, but fewer do today.
No one can say with certainty that the summer of 1980, or that
of 1988, or the recent droughts in the Southeast or Southwest, or
Katrina, or the fl oods in Iowa in 2008, or any number of other
weather events are the result of anthropogenic climate change.
But the odds that they are rise with each increment of temperature
increase, and they are certainly consistent with what can be
expected in years to come.
After the summer of 1980, climate change was important to me,
not because I’d thought a great deal about it in an air-conditioned
offi ce but because I had fi rst felt it viscerally and somatically. My
interest did not begin with any abstract intellectual process or
deep thinking but rather with the felt experience of the thing, or
what the thing will be like. That summer is recorded both mentally
and bodily in memories of extreme heat with no respite.
In the summer of 1988 our organization, the Meadowcreek
Project, Inc., sponsored the fi rst conference ever on the future of the
banking industry in a hotter world. Then-Governor Bill Clinton
cosponsored the event, which included bankers from Arkansas,
Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma and climate scientists such as
Stephen Schneider and George Woodwell and energy expert
Amory Lovins. The point of the event was to advocate changes
in banking practices to minimize climate effects and encourage
lenders to recognize their self-interest in avoiding loans for energy
ineffi cient projects. One of the bankers, Bill Bowen, said that “if
half of what I’ve heard is correct, what I’m doing is criminal.”
I responded by saying something to the effect that more than half