Are we at the point of no return?

Past the point of no return

No backward glances

Our games of make believe are at an end …

— Andrew LLoyd-Webber’s Phantom of the Opera

About 20 years ago, I read a book on global warming called “The Next One Hundred Years.” The book was filled with dire — and, as it turns out, alarmingly accurate predictions — about what would happen as the earth heated up: There would be an uptick in violent, unpredictable storms, severe droughts in arid regions and massive flooding elsewhere. Disappearing glaciers would threaten much of the world’s water supply as rising seas inundated coastlines.

Furthermore, the author maintained that we had already loaded the atmosphere with so much heat-trapping carbon dioxide that, even if we stopped adding CO2 right then, it would take more than a century for the atmosphere to revert to natural, pre-industrial levels.

I became depressed, because I knew that CO2 pollution and other environmental degradation would only increase in the coming decades. It seemed that my efforts on behalf of the environment — starting an “ecological design” program at an architecture school and trying to live an environmentally conscious life — would have no effect against the industrial and financial juggernaut that was gobbling up the planet’s resources and spitting them out as pollution.

Still, being both a hopeful and a defiant soul, and seeing humanity’s back against the wall, so to speak, I vowed to fight on, learning about and teaching environmentalism. Early prognosticators thought we had two or three generations to turn things around; the serious effects of global warming would manifest themselves about 2050. Perhaps humanity would change its ways before it was too late.

But I was also aware of the imminent threat of uncontrollable feedback loops that could be triggered by global warming: how heat-reflecting ice could melt, exposing the dark, heat-absorbing water or land beneath it to sunlight; and those warmer masses, in turn, would accelerate the melting of the ice. Or how the warming of the frozen tundra could release huge quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas that traps 20 to 40 times as much heat as CO2; and the newly trapped heat would accelerate the warming of the tundra.

Once such massive feedback loops get started, there is nothing humans can do to stop them. So I decided to keep an eye on the planet’s feedback loops to assess humanity’s chances as the situation developed.

When I read “The Next One Hundred Years,” the CO2 content of the atmosphere was below 350 parts per million (ppm), the maximum level most experts think could ensure climate stability. Two decades have passed and no serious efforts have been made to reduce our CO2 output, which now stands at 394 ppm and is climbing rapidly.

Along the way I learned about peak oil, peak uranium, peak food supply … peak everything, including the peak capacity of the oceans to sequester CO2.

But like most people, I stubbornly clung to the idea that we would have time to address these mounting problems, to adjust, to fix things.

Then suddenly, almost imperceptibly, the predictions started coming true.

Look at the past two years: record floods in Pakistan, Australia and Mississippi. Rising seas inundating Bangladesh and Micronesia. Record drought and fires in Russia, Australia, Arizona. Record springtime tornadoes in the midwest and south. The peaks are peaking, the ice is melting, the tundra thawing and the feedback loops rolling — two generations ahead of schedule.

It’s too late — we’ve passed the environmental tipping point, and everything will change.

What can we expect the future to bring? What adjustments can you and I make? (The mainstream economy likely will continue to outgas CO2 until, in about two decades, that’s no longer possible.)

The human economy is a subsystem of the environment, and ultimately follows its course — either toward more beauty, diversity and richness or toward degradation. In a phrase, we’re entering an era of enforced community-reliance as the environment and its dependent economies deteriorate.

In a previous column, I proposed reducing our individual environmental footprints by 10 percent to ameliorate our predicament. That will help if it happens now. But we’ll need to do a lot more to live within our means in our ecological house.

Helena Independent Record