Responding Before or After: How does one mobilize? One of the most pressing issues that I see can be
summarized in this question: How do we as a society – as members of the public, civil society, and government;
citizens and officials respond to an issue [or problem] BEFORE it is experienced as a concrete threat? We know
from climate science that there is likely a tipping point in our climate system, where it shifts from the one we
know, more or less, to another that we do not. Where in history have we as a nation, or any nation, mobilized
to the possibility of a threat before it has become an actual threat, that is ... been proactive vs. simply being
reactive? How can we make the investment in solutions so that we can avoid unknown shades of disaster?
Typically it is difficult to muster the political and public support for solutions until after the problem exists. This
may be a problem at the individual as well as institutional level. Y2K may be one example? How did we do
that? From what I understand [and my knowledge here is very limited], was that while the threats were many
and largely unknown, mostly there was no vested economic interest drawing lines in the sand. In fact, it was an
economic windfall to particular players in the software industry. In short, with Y2K there was money to be made
by correcting the potential problems vs. powerful sector of the economy – fossil fuel industry and the extractive
industries more generally - whose bottom lines and perhaps entire future to be affected if action is taken. A key
question for me is how do we engage these powerful economic interests in finding solutions instead of simply
attempting to delay action? It may be worthwhile funding research to search for examples of pre-emptive socio-
political-economic actions and the lessons learned from those efforts.
Another area of research should likely focus on the social disruption and consequence of a failure to
respond appropriately...which I actually predict. If we wittingly or unwittingly take an adaptive approach to
climate change, we need to think clearly about the social disruption that would emerge from climate change. I
think that once a tipping point is achieved, change and its consequences will be experienced quite rapidly. There
are of course, consequences in the poorer, developing south and the consequences experienced in the richer, more
developed north. And what might be a particularly interesting examination would obviously be the interaction
of the two. I fear that if the U.S. people and government are concerned now about issues of legal and illegal
immigration, how will we respond as a nation to issues of dramatic change affecting the livelihoods of millions of
people across the globe? How will groups in U.S. society respond to dramatic international turmoil and economic
disruption and downturn globally? Without an expanding economic pie both domestically and internationally
I am fearful that fear itself will take hold, and we will lose a collective sense of ourselves and breakdown on
race, class and religious lines even more than we are currently. If our society–and the global collective – become
dysfunctional the social consequence will be enormous.
Understanding Public Attitudes and Values Related to Global Climate Change: A Conundrum? In
the more democratic countries, encouraging public understanding and support of global climate change may
be critical to the process of forging national and international approaches to addressing the problem. More
specifically, public support in particular may be critical in encouraging/requiring public officials to make decisive
action on climate change. The last 15 years have been instructive in that we see that the public is very much
influenced by public discussion – either from conservative forces [think tanks; certain political parties] or from
more progressive ones [Al Gore; other political parties]; from campaigns of disinformation to efforts to provide a
clearer message. The public is quite easily influenced and that disagreement alone can confuse the public and stall
political and policy action. We have also learned that there are important powerful actors against any meaningful
climate change policy. Climate change, as have environmental issues more generally, has also become politicized.
Although this may be changing some as the Bush Administration is prepared to leave office, it remains largely a
partisan or at least an ideological issue.