It's here to stay, global warming that is

A few days ago we told you that it's too late to stop global warming. Now Der Spiegel has an interview with the director of the Berlin office of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Dr. Hermann Ott, who agrees It's Too Late to Stop Climate Change. He says that life style changes will be required they don't have to impact the quality of life. Although the Bush administration has refused to cooperate with the international community he believes the United States will take a leadership role in the not too distant future. Dr. Ott says there is no doubt that global warming is here.

SPIEGEL: Depending on whose forecasts you read, the planet could warm anywhere between 1.4 and 11 degrees Celsius during the next century. How significant do you expect the increase to be?

Ott:I would assume an increase of between 3 and 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. But it could easily be 6 degrees. That's a little bit greater than the difference between now and the last ice age. Europe will look very different, but of course, the effects are not going to be the same everywhere. In some parts of the world you'll have a change of 10 degrees or 11 degrees. In others you will have only an increase of 1 or 2 degrees. If we talk about skepticism among scientists, it's not about whether or not man-made climate change exists, it's more about what the impacts are going to be. Increasingly, we have computer models that can predict more accurately, but it will take a few years before we know concretely what will happen.

It could be hotter or rainier in some places or it could get cooler in Northern Europe if the Gulf Stream is disrupted. If that happens, we will have temperatures maybe 5 degrees lower than now. Some argue that a 5 degree increase from global warming would offset the effects of a disrupted Gulf Stream, but we already know that fiddling with the system can produce results we are incapable of handling anymore -- and, frankly, we don't know which direction it's going to steer.

It is too late to stop it but...

SPIEGEL: Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, recently said that we are approaching the point of no return. Another recent report said we are already beyond it. What do you think?

Ott: It's too late to stop climate change, that's for sure, but we can still influence the degree of changes and the degree of impacts. We can prepare for a softer landing. Once the impact of climate change becomes visible, politics will react quickly and forcefully. We saw that in Germany in 2002 during the floods on the Elbe River. They, in fact, determined the result of the (general) elections (later that same year). What we're trying to do now is to steer our boat on a path that is a little more sustainable so that the crash will not be as hard as it otherwise would be.

And the United States?

Ott: We're going to see a change of attitudes in the United States and we will see some concrete actions.

What will the lifestyle changes be?

Ott: I was an avid reader of futurists during the 1970s and '80s. They were so wrong -- about everything. It's always difficult to make predictions about the future. But what you could see is a lifestyle that is completely independent from fossil fuels and very independent from outside energy.

In terms of infrastructure, people will aim at living near where they work. We will have much more localized lifestyles. Travel requires a great deal of energy -- whether you go by car, by bus, by train or plane. We'll likely be using hydrogen as our main energy for transport. Individual transportation has become synonymous for freedom and liberty, so it would be difficult to actually get rid of individualized transport, and in rural areas that would be impossible. So we will have individual transport, but on a much lower scale.

An unprecedented challenge:

Compared to what we're up against now, the nuclear threat was tiny. What we're faced with now is as destructive as a nuclear war, but unlike the Cold War. There is no individual here with his hand on a launch button. Billions of people have to take individual decisions about what they're going to do -- and it's running up against vested interests. It has massive implications for the way we think about our economies and it runs up against the limits of a capitalist society. Our choices now are simple: hope for a technological miracle or try to steer the tanker a little bit from its current path and hope that that's sufficient. Mankind is, for the first time, in the position to actually do this, to consciously steer a different path. We've never had or even been able to do that before -- but now we can and it's our biggest challenge. Nature does not forgive.