20 Incontrovertible Truths About Global Warming

20 Incontrovertible Truths about Global Warming –

A Comprehensive Look at a Global Challenge

by Alasdair Coyne

 

The story of global warming is a complicated one.  A proper understanding of it requires considering the long-term repercussions of how we are today altering the life-sustaining ecological balance of the Earth.  Scientists are now saying that we must stop the current annual increase in global emissions of climate changing gases in as little as seven years from now.  Meanwhile, life around us seems to go on as usual – people driving and flying and shopping, all of which contribute to climate change.  There’s not much indication yet that the necessary changes will come about in the next seven years.

In the following article, I’ve selected twenty points which will hopefully be useful to bear in mind as you learn more about global warming, and each of those points is discussed fairly briefly.  It would be easy to write a chapter of a book on each point, but this is meant to be a quick but thorough introduction to the topic.  Future articles will focus on some of these points in detail.

Politicians often simply don’t know how to respond to climate change.  There are some champions out there, but most elected officials haven’t talked the time to grasp the importance of the changes to our planet’s life support systems that we are causing by our fossil fuel powered lifestyles.  Nor do they understand that ignoring the issue is guaranteed to make those coming changes even more severe and permanent.

One important approach is grassroots education.  Millions of Americans must absorb enough information about global warming that they begin to reevaluate their priorities, make appropriate changes in their own lives, and demand far-reaching and comprehensive political responses.

People must understand that the web of life that supports them with their food, water and shelter is undergoing such dynamic changes that these things will actually become less available to their children.  The lifestyle of the developed world, heavily based on fossil fuels, is not the only way to live on this planet.  Climate change requires us to reinvent how we provide the energy for humanity’s basic needs.  In the next seven years.  It’s time to start shouting from the rooftops.

 

(1) Global Warming is caused by a build-up of minor gases in the atmosphere that retain heat from the sun very effectively.

Global warming gases are produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels, the engines of modern industrial society.  They are also produced by cattle and by deforestation, among other things.  The predominant greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, CO₂.  Nitrogen and oxygen, the major gases in our atmosphere, do not retain heat.

The buildup of these minor gases in our atmosphere has led to a warming of both the air and the oceans.  This warming has disrupted what had been a relatively stable climate over recent centuries, and our continued reliance on fossil fuels is guaranteed to increase climate instability over decades, even centuries to come.  Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can remain there for up to 500 years.

Some results of climate instability are rising oceans, melting glaciers, shrinking ice caps over Greenland and parts of Antarctica, fiercer hurricanes, shifting rainfall patterns and long term droughts, and the extinction of a large percentage of plant and animal species, those that cannot adjust to the speedy rise in temperatures in their home environment.

 

(2) Global Warming has come about largely as a result of our increasing and widespread use of cheap oil and gas since the end of WWII.

The late 1940’s saw the start of the great expansion of oil production from the Middle East, which still holds the world’s largest remaining oil reserves.

This flow of oil was cheaply enough extracted and marketed to allow for the manufacture and distribution of the plethora of consumer goods now enjoyed by the world’s wealthier peoples.  Advertisers joined in to create needs these people didn’t know existed and which we now take for granted.  In a nutshell, this is how we’ve got to where we are today, with fossil fuel usage at such a heightened level that it’s changing our stable climate.  Our modern industrial civilization depends even more on a stable climate than on the fossil fuels that it is currently addicted to.

(3) Most people in the richer countries are each responsible for tons of carbon dioxide released annually into the atmosphere.

There’s a little chemistry lesson needed here.  When the carbon in fossil fuels burns, it reacts with oxygen in the air to create carbon dioxide, CO2.

Oxygen in our atmosphere is in itself not a greenhouse gas that absorbs heat.  But when fossil fuels burn, each carbon atom joins up with two oxygen atoms to form CO2, multiplying the weight of the resulting greenhouse gas far beyond the weight of the carbon that was burned in the fossil fuel.

That’s how using a gallon of gas in your car releases 20 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  100 gallons of gas release a whole ton of carbon dioxide; and filling up with 10 gallons of gas a week gives you a “carbon footprint” of 5 tons a year for your car, or around the US average.

Add to that the electricity you use at home, and the furnace and air conditioning, and the energy taken to transport the food and other stuff you buy from their origins to the stores you bought them all at, and the average American’s greenhouse gas releases total about 20 tons a year.

(4) To reduce climate instability, we must speedily reduce our global consumption of fossil fuels.

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports to the UN with its findings.  The IPCC is a consensus organization, which means that all its reports are approved by all of the 2,000 scientists from 100 countries that sit on the panel.

The IPCC’s best estimates of how to slow global warming recommend that the developed world reduce its reliance on fossil fuels by the year 2050 by a factor of 80%, based on what was consumed in 1990.

So far, eighteen years into this sixty-year timespan, global consumption of fossil fuels is still rising – and rising pretty fast.  We are not yet at the peak of fossil fuel usage, let alone returning to 1990’s levels, let alone reducing that level by 80%.  You could say that this is the bad news.

California, which if it were its own country would have the world’s sixth largest economy, has recently taken a lead in planning to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.  Legislation passed in 2006 requires the state to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 25% between 2006 and 2020.

(5) Peak oil and global warming are both coming to a head at the same point in our history.

Oil is the overwhelmingly dominant fuel choice for global transportation by land, air or sea.

Experts who study how much oil is still available to be extracted are in broad agreement that our global ability to produce oil will start to shrink within the next few years.  The phrase “peak oil” refers to the time at which the volume of oil production begins a permanent decline.  At the same time, demand for oil will still be rising, especially in fast-developing nations such as India and China.

This can only lead to one thing – steep, permanent and ongoing increases in oil prices.  The same is true for natural gas, the cleanest fossil fuel in terms of climate change.  Coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel in terms of climate change, is plentifully available.

Items such as plastics and fertilizers, which are made from oil and gas, will also go up in price. Just as we need drastically to be reducing the use of oil and gas to limit climate change, their prices will be going up.  We will have to use less of them because we won’t be able to afford to buy as much of them as we do now.

We must focus on two things that will help us address both problems – climate change and more expensive fossil fuels – namely, the use of alternative, renewable fuels and the greater application of efficiency to how we use fuels of all sorts.  If you can perform a task – heating your house, or driving to work – with half the energy you use now, then you’re still getting the job done, but you’re only using half the energy you used before.  That’s what efficiency is all about.

 

(6)  The USA remains the Key to responding to global climate change.

We are, taken together, the energy hogs of the planet.  With around 5% of the world’s population, the US is responsible for a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

You might be surprised to learn that the US still has 30% of the 700 million cars in the world today – and that these cars produce half of the greenhouse gases of all cars everywhere.  That’s because our cars get worse mileage, and because we drive them further than do drivers elsewhere.

The US also is home to one in six power plants worldwide.

Quite apart from that, US media broadcast the American way of life across the planet on TV screens and at the movies.  The whole world, just about, gets glimpses of the lifestyles of the rich and famous here in the USA, and as people in other countries get wealthier, they generally seek the large house, the cars, and the electronic gadgets that they’ve seen on those TV shows.

Which makes it doubly important for Americans to turn away promptly from the culture of consumption and the culture of affluence, and to demonstrate leadership in addressing climate change.

If we retain our current energy-intensive lifestyle (which doesn’t produce the promise of happiness that it is sold to us with), there won’t be much incentive for the fast-growing middle classes in India and China to aim for anything less.  And the planet simply can’t support another billion people living the resource-consumptive lifestyles that we “enjoy” here in the US.

It’s about time for TV shows and movies to reflect the reality of the era of human development that is now upon us – the dawning of the conservation society, where natural resources, including energy, are used sparingly rather than inefficiently and frivolously.  This will be the message, and our way of life, for the indefinite future, like it or not.

By the way, Europeans enjoy a lifestyle comparable to that in the US, while using only half the electric consumption of Americans, mainly due to their smaller houses and appliances.  Currently, the US is second last of around 56 developed nations in its response to climate change.  Leaders in this tally include Germany, Sweden – and Mexico.

 

(7)  The marketplace is not SET UP to address climate change on its own.

Big business is geared to the short-term quarterly reporting of profits.  On the other hand, a wide-ranging response to global climate change requires many avenues of planning and action over multiple decades.

British Petroleum, recently advertising itself as “beyond petroleum,” is boosting its extraction of oil from coal tar sands, which will actually increase global warming because the processing is so energy-intensive.

And agriculture and energy interests are working to turn more and more of the US corn crop into ethanol, which is inefficient because of the energy already used by the fertilizers and farm equipment to grow the corn.  What’s more, a global shortage of corn has already resulted in widespread hunger, even food riots, in poor countries.  “Done wrong, ethanol could wreak havoc on the environment while increasing greenhouse gases,” editorialized the New York Times on 2.24.08.

Of course, the nuclear industry is pushing hard for new nuclear power plants.  But these are so costly – and inevitably plagued by large cost overruns and decades of construction time – that available funding needs to be focused instead on efficiency programs, which make a large difference in very little time.

Now there are big businesses that are taking climate change seriously and that are making radical changes towards carbon neutrality (which means emitting no greenhouse gases, when a business’ entire operations are considered as a whole). Google recently pledged millions of dollars for a project that will produce enough renewable energy to power all of San Francisco at a price cheaper than coal.

However, the momentum of big business is not yet positioned or ready to take the steps required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally.  This is where legislative direction is vital, as well as consumer pressure.

Then there are the climate change denial corporations, chiefly Exxon-Mobil, who have spent millions of dollars over many years, to sow seeds of doubt about the reality of global climate change in the minds of both politicians and the population at large.  I can imagine conscious, determined efforts like these, which may have set back a full scale response to climate change by a decade in the US, being classified some day as crimes against humanity, or more correctly, crimes against life on Earth.

(8)  You need to educate yourself and your children, family and friends, about global warming.

The growing threat to climate stability posed by global warming requires the involvement of an informed public.  Otherwise politicians and the corporations that so many of them are friendly with will work to spend enormous sums on measures which won’t help slow global warming very much – if at all.  Two examples are corn-into-ethanol and oil from coal tar sands both mentioned above.

The scientific consensus on global warming says we have less than ten years to turn things around.  This is not a lot of time!

            Remember, the Bush Administration has just wasted the first seven years of the new century in denying the reality of climate change – and then funding big business to turn corn into ethanol, which is good for big business profits, but not for averting climate change.

If you are not actually changing the amount of energy you, it is guaranteed that you will be forced by circumstances to make these changes more hurriedly and more drastically, down the road.  Be smart about this.  In the same way that you plan for the kids going to college, or for your retirement, you need to plan for climate change and how it will affect you.  Don’t delay.  Doing nothing about climate change is not an option.

 

(9)  One Family’s Climate Change Actions are Both Important AND a Mere Drop in the Bucket.

You can do everything you can to reduce what is called your “carbon footprint” – getting a vehicle with much higher mileage, putting solar panels on your roof to generate electricity, buying locally grown food, reducing your air travel and road trips – and still the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be increasing.  You have to get others involved.

There’s no idyllic backwoods to run off to, to get away from the effects of global warming.  The issue requires action on a wide range of fronts – personal, family, community, school, work, local and state and national politics.

Because you can’t just sit back in satisfaction, when you’ve taken some big steps yourself to reduce your carbon footprint, and ignore the fact that the rest of your street, or your acquaintance, is still proceeding in blissful ignorance of the changes global warming will bring.

Doing what you can makes a negligible difference until millions of others do the same.

We all need to start thinking and talking about global warming!

(10)                Citizens and Governments must Work Together Now – To Reduce Global Warming Down the Road!

Whilst it may still take years for the broad public “inertia to change” to lessen, with respect to global warming, there are a number of very important steps that need to be taken right away to avoid a massive waste of time and resources that will worsen climate change.

A combination of informed citizen activism and forward-thinking political action must ensure that new power plants are designed to be as efficient as possible, and likewise for new vehicles.  Power plants have a useful lifespan of around 30 years, so we need to design and build them with efficiency in mind, or we’ll be stuck with their wasteful consumption of fossil fuels for decades to come.  Stable tax policies to support renewable energy are vital to enact as soon as possible.

One shining example of doing the right thing is Los Angeles Unified School District’s current project of constructing 130 new schools – and designing them to be green.

Governments around the world are not acting fast enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  “Attempts even to slow the rate of increase of carbon emissions have paralyzed world politics for more than a decade,” editorialized the LA Times on 3.15.08.

 

(11)       Global Warming Requires Us To Question – and Change – The Status Quo of Today’s Consumer Society.

The cheap oil that society has undoubtedly benefited from over the past decades is coming to an end soon.  We’ve all grown used to cheap transportation, cheap food, cheap clothing, cheap consumer goods, shipped from across the world to whatever stores we frequent.  Cheap oil has given us car-dependent suburbs and big box stores.  And relentless advertising has drummed into our heads that buying stuff is the key to happiness.

Most of us would probably agree that the comforts and consumer products of our modern lifestyle in developed countries represent the pinnacle of human evolution.

Now, however, global warming comes along and makes us realize that this is most decidedly not the case.  Remember, it’s not nature that is the problem here, it is our worldwide intensive use of fossil fuels that is heating up the atmosphere.  How we’ve fueled our lives is simply not sustainable.  It’s time to change, to see how much less we can use of the available consumer goods that we don’t really need.

 

(12)                We are at the Threshold of a Conservation Society.

From now on, the wasteful and inefficient use of fossil fuels represents an unconscionable contribution to the worsening of global climate change.

Let’s look down the road to where global sea levels are rising, devastating storms are both worsening and more frequent, and food is in short supply because of droughts and changing climate.

How are you going to look your children and grandchildren in the eye and apologize to them for not acting earlier to reduce your carbon footprint?  For being so busy that you didn’t pay attention?

The world we need to build, as soon as possible, is one where our long-term use of resources is tied to our basic needs for food, clothing, shelter and limited personal transportation.  Just about everything will be both recyclable and actually recycled.

We won’t be buying everything from China for very long.  This will require us to focus again on “Made in the USA,” because the fossil fuels required for today’s level of international trade will either be unavailable or too expensive, or both.  Economies will need to focus largely on local markets.

 

(13)                The Scientific Consensus on Global Warming Could be Way too Conservative.

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a consensus-based organization.  This means that its reports are necessarily pretty conservative, because if one or several of the 2,000 scientists on the panel object to a particular sentence in a report as being too strongly worded, they can change it, tone it down.

The IPCC’s recommendation that, to avoid the worst excesses of global change, we must by 2050 reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% of 1990’s levels, may in fact be too conservative – by far.

What if we find we have to do this in half the time – say by 2025?  Taking 50 years to reconstruct global society is doable, if we all get involved.  Finding we have to change drastically at very short notice is more likely a recipe for the collapse of our global civilization.  Let me explain.

The IPCC’s analysis of global warming chose not to address some important factors, because of the variables and uncertainties involved, according to James Hansen, the nation’s leading climate scientist, who spoke at UCSB in February 2007.  Two of those factors are the rate of melting of the Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets.

Currently, some parts of Antarctica are warming while other parts are cooling.  It was thought that the Greenland ice sheet would take centuries to melt.  Now it’s melting twice as fast as it was only 5 years ago.

If too much freshwater from ice melt in Greenland pours into the North Atlantic, it will eventually cause the warm Gulf Stream current to stop flowing, which keeps Northern Europe at habitable temperatures.  Studies have shown that the Gulf Stream has in fact stopped in the distant past, and quite abruptly.  It’s not in our power to turn on a Gulf Stream current again, if it quits.  While most of the rest of the planet heats up, we’ll be looking at Northern Europe with its agriculture failing and its people shivering and attempting to migrate south.  But that’s not all.

Melting the Greenland ice sheet will raise the oceans by twenty feet worldwide.  That means goodbye to world trade as we know it, right there.  Where will the resources come from to rebuild every harbor and port in the world multiple times, eventually to twenty feet higher up?  Or to shelter the 300 million people whose homes will be flooded, worldwide, by a permanent twenty-foot sea level increase?

These are examples of “tipping points,” where specific conditions change rapidly and irreversibly.   Climate change is not a smooth process so much as a set of changes that includes sudden and severe shifts.

A study just published this fall shows that carbon dioxide levels are indeed increasing faster than expected – due both to China’s continuing industrialization, based on dirty coal-fired power plants, and to the fact that the oceans seem to be absorbing less carbon dioxide than they have up until now.

The IPCC not long ago estimated that the Arctic would be ice free in summer by around 2100 – but more recent estimates say this could occur around 2013.  Things are changing much more quickly than expected.

The long and short of it is that we are unwise to rely on the conservative estimates of where global warming will take our planet.  It is only prudent to plan for worse and sooner.  Again, that’s why you need to get involved, educated and active right now.  Time is not on our side.

It’s entirely possible that our world, that seems so stable in our everyday lives, could change beyond recognition within a lifetime.  It’s a sobering consideration, to say the least.  It’s worth working to stop such drastic change from occurring.  Our children will definitely thank us for this.

In September 2007, the International Institute for Strategic Studies issued a report warning that the effects of unchecked climate change will be catastrophic “on the level of nuclear war.”

A recent IPCC report on global climate change, issued in mid November 2007, really put the challenge clearly.  The global carbon emissions which are still growing in magnitude will have to STOP growing within only seven years from now, and then decrease in magnitude rapidly, to avoid the extinction of up to a quarter of all plant species on Earth.

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon implored political leaders to enact changes.  “If the (IPCC) panel’s most severe projection comes through, much of the Amazon rainforest will transform into savannah.  These things are as frightening as science-fiction movies.  But they are even more terrifying because they are real.”

There is no more time for climate change complacency.

 

(14)                Climate Change Will Be Constant, Over Centuries

The climate changing effects of a build-up of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere are slow to take place.  The storms, droughts and melting ice we are seeing now are tied more closely to the greenhouse gases emitted a decade or so ago than they are to this year’s emissions.

The increase in climate change from today’s emissions of greenhouse gases will not be apparent for maybe another 20 years.  And, as we’ve seen, global emissions of these gases are still rising.  Even if, as needs to happen, these emissions begin to level off and to drop to 1990’s levels, hopefully before 2050, their cumulative effects on our climate will still grow. 

The IPCC says the world’s oceans will be rising for 1000 years.

There simply isn’t a scenario out there where Planet Earth will return to the relatively stable climate of, say, 100 years ago – not for centuries, if ever.

We’ve already upset the climate balance and set in motion a series of changes that are unstoppable.  What we must do is to slow down the rate of change and thereby soften the worst of what is otherwise to come down the road.

Which makes it all the more important to do as much as you can, as soon as possible, to limit greenhouse gas emissions from your way of life.

 

(15)                Population Growth is a Climate Changing Factor

As the world’s population grows, and as that population naturally seeks to improve its standard of living, more fuel will be consumed.

Therefore providing both family planning services and education to women in the Third World (where most of the population growth takes place) is key to addressing global climate change.  These two factors have been shown to be vital components of slowing down population growth.

It is also important to provide renewable energy, such as solar power, to help Third World inhabitants to develop without relying on fossil fuels.  Generally, the poorest of the world’s poor are disproportionately affected by climate change, although they contribute almost nothing to it.  In fact, 2007’s worldwide appeals to the UN for food aid were all but one related to climate change.

 

(16)                There is no One Solution to Global Warming – The Answers Are Many

There just isn’t any one magic formula that will replace fossil fuels in all their multitude of uses, from power generation to heating, from transportation to the manufacture of plastics and fertilizers.

The solutions are and will be many.  Solar and wind power can generate electricity for households, but neither is available 24/7.  Storage capacity is therefore needed, and being developed.  Wave and tide power are useful near the oceans – Portugal is aiming for something like 40% of its power from these sources.

More efficient vehicles, more efficient heating and cooling units, more insulation and the like will all help to lessen the demand for power in the first place.  Massive investment and improvements in subways, buses and trains are needed to wean us out of our individual cars.

While corn ethanol production will fuel world hunger as well as vehicles, ethanol from other specific crops, grown on land not currently cultivated, can help to power some vehicles without jeopardizing the world’s food supply.

Eating less meat is important, because the amount of grain needed to feed farm animals can directly feed many more people instead.  In climate terms, 8 oz of beef steak requires 16 times more fossil fuel input than a dinner of 8 oz rice and 6 oz vegetables.  Globally, farm animals now consume one third of the world’s grain supply.

And buying less stuff eliminates the energy required to manufacture that stuff and to ship it to you.

 

(17)                The Efficient Use of all Fuels is Vital.

Efficiency is the closest solution out there to a magic bullet.  It is always the cheapest way to reduce fossil fuel consumption – even before installing solar panels and building wind farms.  Efficiency alone, over decades, can probably reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 50%.  Efficiency programs have the added benefit of not crimping your lifestyle at all.

For instance, California, fast-growing in population as it is, has managed to keep the state’s electricity usage around the same for the past three decades by conservation and efficiency improvements.  Meanwhile, electricity usage elsewhere in the US has grown by 50% over the same period.

In early 2006 it was reported that California is currently spending $2 billion on further efficiency measures, which will save $3 billion in fuel costs, avoid the need to build 3 new large power plants, the equivalent of taking 650,000 cars off the road.

Because of advances in efficiency, electricity only amounts to 20% of California’s carbon dioxide emissions.  For the rest of the US the figure is 40%.

To balance the picture, Californians drive more than other Americans, leading to 40% of statewide carbon dioxide emissions coming from transportation.  For the rest of the US the figure is 33%.

Efficiency allows us to do more with less fossil fuels, thereby cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

It is bizarre to realize that it has been our inefficient use of fossil fuels that has led to climate change.  This leads us back to oil’s supremacy as, until recently, such a cheap, plentiful and versatile fuel.  Our way of life on planet Earth is now in jeopardy largely because of how much fuel we waste in driving inefficient vehicles, and in using inefficient furnaces to heat homes that are poorly insulated.

 

(18)                We already Have The Technology to Move away From Fossil Fuels.

Though future advances in technology will obviously be of tremendous benefit as we work harder to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions down the road, it is a fact that we do not need any technological breakthroughs to take action now.  Without funding nuclear power, corn ethanol or oil from coal tar sands.

Solar and wind power will come down in price as mass production grows, but we need to be funding and installing renewable energy systems to power homes and factories in towns and cities across the world.

Germany, a world leader in this field, has already reduced its overall carbon dioxide emissions by 18%, by investing in efficiency and renewables.

Frito-Lay is currently doing a green retrofit of a factory in Casa Grande.  When completed in 2010, its use of water and electricity will have been reduced by 90% and its use of natural gas by 80%.  The goal at the Casa Grande factory is eventually to be “net zero” in carbon dioxide emissions.  50 acres of solar concentrator mirrors will be installed behind the factory, to heat water to 500° F to power a steam generator.  Since 1999, Frito-Lay has reduced its water use company-wide by 38%, its natural gas use by 27% and its electric consumption by 21%, saving $55 million a year in utility bills.

Adam Steiner, head of the UN Environment Program states that “stabilization of emissions can be achieved by deployment of a portfolio of technologies that exist or are already under development.”

What is needed, then, is the political will power, backed by widespread public support and adequate funding.

The costs may seem high.  A UN Conference in September 2007 recommended the dedication of $200 billion a year in additional funding to reduce the growth in carbon dioxide emissions.

But compare the cost of our war in Iraq.  A UCSB professor recently calculated that for the price of the Iraq War, solar power could have been installed on every home in the US.  Are we going to go to war over oil again and again?  Or, are we going to elect leaders that will quickly, meaning in the next few years, lead us away from fossil fuels, their increasing costs and the climate change they create?  Renewable energy provides real energy independence.

 

(19)                Eventually, the Global Response will rise to the Challenges of global warming.

What’s holding up faster and more wide-ranging action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is the still shallow response by most politicians.  As public awareness grows and as climate change conditions worsen, it is inevitable that eventually the public clamor for appropriate action will reach the primacy of place on the political agenda that it should already hold today.  What is not clear is how much further damage to climate stability will be inflicted by that point, by ongoing, wasteful greenhouse gas emissions between now and then.

The fact that politicians are not yet wide awake to the threat to our future that is posed by climate change, is probably because so many of them are still more disposed to protect automobile and oil industry corporate profits, than to provide for the needs of the American people when the survival of their way of life hangs in the balance.

It also helps to think in terms of ecological systems, which most politicians are not trained to do.  It won’t be possible to protect every segment of our global consumer society as we shift to a simpler lifestyle powered by renewable energy.  Further delaying our response to climate change will only result in more drastic instability in the climate and the economy.

Congressman John Dingell (D-Michigan), chair of the House’s Energy & Commerce Committee, has for years refused to consider meaningful increases in passenger car miles-per-gallon standards, thus guaranteeing a massive flow of inefficient vehicles onto our nation’s highways.  He certainly hasn’t been thinking or acting with global climate change in mind.

Our choice is to act aggressively as soon as we can, or to be forced to adjust more drastically to worsening climate change later on.

I think there’s a valid analogy here to how British and American civilians rallied behind their national war efforts in WWII.  An adequate response to global climate change requires the mass of the population to support efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: the focus of research and manufacture on the mass production of the necessary equipment – in this case, mainly solar and wind power and improvements in efficiency; a nationwide commitment to frugality and the conservation and recycling of resources; increased production of food in home “Victory Gardens.” If we don’t move fast enough, someday we are also likely to be faced with the rationing of fossil fuels.

Where this wartime analogy becomes invalid, though, is in the lack of an external “enemy” to fight.  The enemy in a changing climate is our past and present wasteful use of cheap fossil fuels.

(20)                An Emerging Spirit of Global Cooperation Has the Potential to unite the Peoples of Earth As Never Before.

Imagine a world, in the near future, where people in all countries are working in their own ways to reduce and adjust to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.  This is more than just a dream – it’s vital that we make it happen.

As changing weather patterns reduce the rainfall that agriculture and cities depend on, we’re going to be struggling as never before to feed the world’s people.  And to protect coastal cities from rising sea levels.  And to rebuild areas devastated by hurricanes.  And to house mass migrations of people.  At some point the resources won’t be available to do the above and to maintain the enormous cost of the military-industrial complex that the US now supports. It is also important that we elect leaders who won’t go to war to maintain oil industry profits.

Either the military-industrial complex will have to transform to develop and produce the peaceful energy technologies that are needed to combat climate change, or it will wither away from withdrawn funds.  By popular demand.

Beyond that, the level of global goodwill that will develop and grow between peoples working on the same issue – global warming – all around the world, will lessen the ability of aggressive politicians to determine the “other,” a necessary prerequisite to war.  With global climate change, we are all in the same boat.

Interestingly, a mass global popular response to climate change has the potential to unite humanity as never before, moving away from intensive, inefficient energy consumption to a world powered safely by renewable energy – a kind of energy that’s comparatively decentralized and highly unlikely to lead to wars.  A world focused on slowing climate change will also be a world with less and less air and water pollution.

This may sound like a picture of a New Age.  But it’s not going to happen while we sit back – we have to make it happen.  Starting now.  Bearing in mind that the global environment is likely to change in drastic and unpredictable ways in the coming years.