Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional

Once again, the Anchorage Daily News has come out with a hand-wringing editorial worrying about the threat of global warming on Alaska. In the meantime, the state Legislature is forming a committee to look into the matter. It seems to me, however, that bemoaning the inevitable is counter-productive.

Without minimizing for a moment the social costs that will result here in Alaska from extended significant global warming, this phenomenon has been ongoing, to one extent or another, for a very long time, interspersed with periods of global cooling. Alaskans are fond of recounting how, when in 1778 Captain Cook passed through Icy Straight, he could not access Glacier Bay due to the ice.

Jared Diamond, on the other hand, recently spoke at the University of Alaska about his current bestseller Collapse, which features an anecdote about the demise of the Greenland Norse in part due to their failure to adapt to a period of global cooling. Certainly, whether one looks at climate change from the long view or the short view, change is happening.

The issue is what are we going to do about it? Obviously, like King Canute, we cannot hope to avoid crisis by commanding it to go away. Instead, to the extent that there is a climate change in the offing, we should find the way to cash in on it.

For instance, if sea levels are going to rise, it seems reasonable to speculate on real estate that is near (but not too near) the seashore. That way, in due course, the property will become waterfront, and everyone knows how frontage on a body of water increases the value of a parcel of land.

If there will be more wetlands, the result might be an up-tick in the migratory waterfowl population. Perhaps there will be an increased demand for hunting lodges around the state. If it gets warm enough, even banana plantations could be built. There is ample evidence to suggest that in the prehistoric past, Alaska was in a tropical zone, not just once, but several times (between the ice ages, of course). For my own practice, we are girding up for the foreseeable onslaught of property disputes which will result from the loss (or gain, after global warming) of land as the ocean works its will.

Clearly, global warming is the crisis du jour. As crises go, it is not the worst one we have endured in the past century. The Cold War, which reached its crescendo with mutually assured destruction, was kind of nerve-wracking. I can still recall climbing under my grade school desk to avoid being blown away by a nuclear device going off in the adjacent playground. The social conflicts we endured during the fifties with the debate over civil rights and during the sixties with the debate over the war in Vietnam were also pretty significant. We have survived.

If we adopt an optimistic attitude toward climate change, I am sure we will see this crisis through as well. In the meantime as a prophylactic measure, I recommend that we all consider switching from the use hydrocarbons for energy to the use of nuclear powered generators. Fortunately for all of us, Alaska is richly endowed with uranium.