Thursday, November 01, 2012

The Truth is Still Inconvenient

 Read this.

It is directed at the journalistic community, but it really applies to all of us. What are we doing to fight climate change? I will be the first to admit that rarely does a day pass when I do not reflect on climate change, but it is even more rare that I take any action against it. This has to change today.

Climate change is real. Failure to acknowledge this basic fact should disqualify you from any position of responsibility in any public or private organization. The polar ice caps are melting. The ten hottest years on record have all been within the last twenty years. The middle third of America has been gripped by the worst drought since the dust bowl. Last year massive forest fires nearly suffocated Moscow. Other extreme weather events are proliferating.

As global temperatures rise and more carbon enters the atmosphere, sea levels rise, the ocean becomes more acidic and weather becomes more extreme. The scariest thing about climate change today is that when we look back on the range of scary predictions from climate scientists of five and ten years ago, what has actually happened is between the median scenario and the worst case scenario. And time is running short.

How will this affect actual people? Certain small Pacific island nations will be wiped off the map. That's not great, but not a world-historical catastrophe. Think instead about Bangladesh. It is one of the most densely populated low lying countries in the world. It has terrible infrastructure and has suffered from devastating floods since well before climate change was recognized as a problem. At least one hundred million people will need to move. They will likely just walk into neighboring India. Aside from all the human suffering that that will entail, it is a recipe for geopolitical chaos.

Closer to home, coastal flooding will be a growing problem. Will we simply pay to rebuild every time or will we require massive population relocations away from the coasts? Insurance companies will surely not be writing flood insurance. The federal government would be the only entity able to pay, but is that really a good allocation of scarce resources?

That is only a very brief and incomplete review of the consequences of inaction. Time is short, but there are still things we can do to avert this catastrophe.

First, there are things that you can do to actually use less energy. The biggest one of these is simply to drive less. Yes, I realize most people in America need to do at least some driving, but most people drive more than is necessary. When public transit is an option, use it. Make shopping lists. Yes, make shopping lists. When you buy everything at once, you can make fewer trips. Every gallon of gasoline you do not burn is carbon that is not released into the atmosphere and four dollars in your pocket.

Be more energy efficient in your home. In most areas now, if you have a free-standing single-family home, you should be able to purchase solar panels with little up front cost. Set your thermostat two degrees colder in the winter and two degrees warmer in the summer and two degrees colder and warmer still when you are not at home. Invest in insulation and energy-efficient windows. Buy the most energy-efficient appliances available. Small differences add up when everyone contributes. And energy efficiency saves money.

If you have a position of responsibility in the company you work for, make these changes in your company too. Wal-Mart gets a bad rap in many ways and deservedly so in some. But Wal-Mart takes energy efficiency seriously. It is good for PR and good for the bottom line, so they design their stores to be more energy efficient, their packaging to be lighter and their truck routes to be more efficient. If you are in a position to do these types of things you should!

Personal action, virtuous as it is, is not enough, because not everybody will do these things unless compelled to. Advocacy is also important and everyone can become an advocate.

The first way to advocate is to write. Write a letter to your local paper asking why they haven't done a story on how climate change will affect your town. Write to all your elected officials from city council member to President. Do this especially if they accept climate science. They need to know not just that it is real, but that it is a priority. Every governmental entity should be addressing climate change, so every elected official deserves to hear from you about it.Four years ago both candidates for president agreed that action needed to be taken on climate change. Today, Mitt Romney wants to extract and burn every ounce of coal in Appalachia and barely even mentions the falsehood of clean coal. Barack Obama is basically taking the John McCain 2008 position with his "all of the above" policy. This is because the fossil fuel industry spends a huge amount of money buying politicians and cowing the public.

There are a variety of public policy changes that can ameliorate climate change. Cap and trade schemes. Replacing taxation on income with taxation on carbon usage. Sending more efficient cook stoves to sub-Saharan Africa. Closing government-owned lands to oil exploration and coal mining. Even enhancing safety regulations for coal miners (and thus increasing costs of production) would have a positive effect. This is an incomplete list, but do some research and let your elected officials know these actions are not just good policy, but priorities.

If you have money, give it. You are already, one way or another, giving money to fossil fuel companies that are acting to protect their interests. Give some to the Sierra Club so that they can hire more people to shut down coal fired electric plants. Buy carbon offsets for your energy usage (but be careful, some of these outfits are more reputable than others). Give to candidates that make climate change a priority.

Find out what is hot on the climate change front in your area and go to meetings and make yourself heard.

This is clearly an incomplete list, but every thing you do tomorrow that you did not do today is progress. Your example may inspire others or it may dispel ignorance.

Robert Kennedy once said:“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

It was true of the progressive movements of his time and it is true of the anti-climate change movement of our time. If you want your kids and grandchildren to inherit a world as good as the one we currently inhabit, you, we, need to take action today. We need to take action tomorrow. We need to take action next week, next month and next year until we solve this problem. If we wait much longer it will be too late.