Tommy Denton

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All but those who squeeze their eyes shut, hold their hands over their ears, stomp their feet angrily and shout, "No, no, no," have accepted the human complicity in global climate change.

Optimists conclude that agreeing on a corrective course of action is all that remains for prudent inhabitants of Earth to restore the planet to good health.

Realists tend to pause in their enthusiasm for the inevitable ascendancy of rational human behavior. They are likely to take seriously Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies" and "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," two splendid historical and anthropological analyses that provoke serious thought about the mixed results of human decision-making throughout history.

Now that the science has made the compelling case for what's wrong, the next step would seem to be fashioning solutions for the mess the human race has been making of the world.

People would consume far less energy, or alter fundamentally the carbon-based sources of energy that power their transportation, home appliances and other 21st-century engines of necessity and amusement.

Leave it to the pessimists to toss cool water on the prospects of energy redemption, in spite of the grim consequences of allowing procrastination to slide beyond some regrettable point of no return.

Economist and syndicated columnist Robert J. Samuelson wrote in The Washington Post last week that sobering evidence of a pending catastrophe will not overcome the inertia created by reliance on fossil fuels.

"About 80 percent of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels [coal, oil, natural gas]," Samuelson wrote, "the main source of man-made greenhouse gases. Energy use sustains economic growth, which -- in all modern societies -- buttresses political and social stability. Until we can replace fossil fuels or find practical ways to capture their emissions, governments will not sanction the deep energy cuts that would truly affect global warming."

In other words, most people are not inclined to heed the advice of the late Molly Ivins when she invoked her First Rule of Holes: When you're in one, quit digging. Unfortunately, a lot of diggers are in the hole.

According to the International Energy Agency, three-fourths of the carbon dioxide emissions -- 26 billion metric tons in 2004, projected to reach 40 billion metric tons by 2030 -- will be spewed into the atmosphere from developing countries, 40 percent from China alone.

"Poor countries," Samuelson wrote, "won't sacrifice economic growth -- lowering poverty, fostering political stability -- to placate the rich world's global warming fears. Why should they? On a per-person basis, their carbon dioxide emissions are only about one-fifth the level of rich countries. In Africa, less than 40 percent of the population even has electricity."

Solutions to the global problem require action from Third World nations that have neither sufficient incentive to conserve nor the wherewithal to develop alternative energy sources, and from rich industrial nations, particularly the United States, that have been unwilling to make the politically and economically painful sacrifices necessary to break their addiction to fossil fuels.

Samuelson, conservative economist that he is, has advocated a higher U.S. oil tax to encourage the sale of more fuel-efficient cars, which also would lessen reliance on imported oil as well as decrease CO2 emissions. He scoffs at the "cap-and-trade" proposal that would allow big polluters to "trade" for surplus emission quotas from other polluters, calling it the source of a new wave of influence-peddling and sleaze that would benefit lawyers, lobbyists and politicians but not the environment.

But mostly, Samuelson is just a pessimist.

Voluntary reduction of energy consumption in the spirit of shared responsibility obviously has little appeal to most of the American public. Witness the continuing abundance of gas-guzzling SUVs and muscle trucks along local thoroughfares.

Vice President Cheney once offered little encouragement for changed behavior when he dismissed conservation as an agreeable personal virtue but hardly the basis for "a sound, comprehensive energy policy." But attitudes matter, because they influence behavior, and so far the live-for-today crowd is winning.

As the scientific evidence accumulates to support the consequences of climate change, Diamond's book title should give pause to those inclined toward complacency: "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed."

Denton's column appears in the Sunday and Tuesday editions of The Roanoke Times.