Something has changed. Can you tell? It
seems – perhaps – that the U.S. is at last ready to have a sober
and thorough conversation about the different planetary conditions
we've ushered in. It is as if someone smacked the American public
upside the head, and shouted in our ears: climate change is real.
Well, of course, something
did thrash us, or at least, the
east coast, by far the most populous part of the country. As has been
well-publicized by now, Superstorm Sandy, which flooded lower
Manhattan, killed dozens of people, flattened houses, and left
millions without power, has been publicly tied to global warming.
Meteorologists are still issuing caveats that no single storm can be
definitively tied to climate change (James Hansen's new mathematical
approach to analyzing this problem, aside), but – without a doubt –
people are recognizing that the current rise in sea level makes storm
surges all the more hazardous. Sandy had the largest combined tide
and storm-surge in the recorded history of New York City. In
addition, several meteorologists have suggested that the atmospheric
blocking pattern which steered Sandy back toward land, rather than
out to sea, as is traditional for hurricanes on Sandy's early path,
seemed to result from the extreme polar sea-ice melt this summer.
Regardless,
if Sandy is a harbinger of our near-future world, picture this: New
York, the illuminated bastion of high-profile, climate-controlled,
ultra-wealthy style, culture, and class was laid low. What could be
more iconic of our predicament than people stuck in high-rises with
no electricity, no water, no food?
Although,
as a single event, Sandy hasn't yet rivaled 9/11/2001 in monetary
cost to the city, it is becoming clear that looking at ourselves in
the climate mirror is going to be a more expensive taking-stock than
the War on Terror has been, thus far—and even more so if we don't
act now. The International Energy Agency has calculated that every
dollar we delay in spending now on alternative fuel technology and
other climate change mitigation will cost $4.30 if we wait until
2020. By then, conditions will almost certainly already be such that
everyone will recognize we must throw our economy at this problem, it
is no longer a choice to ignore it. (I can tell you that, here in
northeast Missouri, we are experiencing our third “Indian Summer,”
and the odd weather patterns just continue as they have for most of
this past year. We will experience another severe drought in the next
few years, I am sure.)
Sandy
is helping break the ice (no pun intended) for politicians to once
again address global warming. This time, however, the conversation is
different: fiscal conservatives like NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg are
coming on the record saying the jig is up, climate change is
underway, it is having severe consequences, and we must act now. This
is putting strain on the Republican party, which still harbors
veritable lunatics like Sen. Jim Inhofe, who still bellow that global
warming is a fraud. (One wonders whether Inhofe actually understands
that the wildfires which ravaged his state of Oklahoma this summer
are expected to increase in frequency and intensity, as global
temperatures rise.) Global accounting agency Price Waterhouse Cooper
advised their business clients last week to prepare for a 6º
C change in global average temperature by the end of the century.
We who
know that the planet is on the brink (or perhaps just past it) of a
major tipping point in the climate system have a critical moment to
ignite the conversation in a new, a-political way, one that presents
the undiluted truth. According to Kevin Anderson, what we must say is
this: there is not time to roll out efficiency improvements, solar-
and wind-powered electrical grids, shut down coal, and convert the
world's fleet of vehicles to run on some other fuel than petroleum.
There isn't time to develop carbon capture and sequestration.
On
Nov. 6, Anderson gave a speech to the Cabot Institute in Bristol,
England, and he presented the stark truth more clearly than he ever
has before. Every industrialized country is pledged, morally and
legally, not to allow average global temperature to rise more than 2º
C above the pre-industrial average. Given that accomplishing this
task of limiting the temperature rise in this way means reducing our
CO2
emissions
by 8% per year, industrialized countries like the U.S. have no moral
or legal choice except to foment a managed economic downturn. You
heard me. We have to accept significant austerity measures,
rationing, cease unnecessary flying. No more unnecessary, on-demand,
24/7 electric availability. We can live with two hours of electricity
a day.
Sure,
we still need to leverage the fossil fuel industry to abandon its
genocidal business model, we must replace coal, oil, and natural gas
with wind, solar, wave, and maybe nuclear power. We need governments
to enact a carbon tax (thank goodness the U.S. is talking about it
again). Moreover, that tax needs to be heftier than the modest,
politically anodyne proposals put forward so far. But, Anderson
argues, if we can't transform or limit supply in the miniscule
time-frame left (the brave, post-fossil-fuel world would need to be
well off the ground by 2015 at the very latest), then we must cut the
throat of demand.
If
you think this is a lot to accept, now you understand why we need
real, rigorous debate; particularly, we need climate activists who
don't blanch and yield when the other side dismisses reality as
“politically unfeasible,” or “unrealistic.” With that in
mind, I'd like to describe two recent events that we at Pacing the
Planet have witnessed, which illustrate well the kind of pitfalls
that any of us can trip into, if we don't hold firm the context of
the emergency at hand.
A
few weeks ago, we brought Pacing the Planet to the University of
Missouri campus in Columbia. We walked with our carts around the
sprawling grounds of the school, and we met with members of the
student group Coal
Free Mizzou, who
are working to end the burning of coal in the university's self-owned
power and heating plant. The students told us that they had been in
long negotiations with the university, haggling over the time-line
and funding of the power plant's transition to burning solid biofuel.
As it stands, the university is unwilling to pledge to a specific
date when it will stop burning coal, even though Bill McKibben
himself called up the president of the school, while a live audience
watched, and cajoled him to come to the bargaining table with
calendar in hand.
Coal
Free Mizzou
has been wisely pressing for 2015 as the year when the university will no
longer burn coal, but the student members have been sucked into a
vortex of negotiation with a university administration that has not
willingly handed over crucial pieces of data that they have
collected, related to the would-be transition away from coal. The
administrators are not replying to certain letters of inquiry, and
consequently the students have filed a Freedom of Information Act
request. The school is arguing that the plan to navigate the Mizzou
away from coal needs to be balanced with the other financial expenses
of the university – and, to a large extent, it seems that Coal
Free Mizzou has
capitulated on this point.
I
understand that they have made progress (they believe) with the administration, but I think letting officials dictate the context of the negotiation is a mistake. The rational position to take with the
university is actually simple: if you can't run the school without
burning coal, then you must stop running the school. There is no
meaningful future for all of these students graduating into their
various fields of expertise and employment if the world temperature
rises by 6º
C. Hunting for car-keys under the light because you can see there,
even when you know the keys were lost in the dark, will not yield you
the keys. Pretending that there is some more economically salubrious
approach to saving what's left of the climate will not tack hard
enough against the current that's carrying us off the cliff into
desolation. It's time to play hardball. And, when the university (or
whoever it is) responds: “You're not ready to have a real
conversation about this, a balanced and mature conversation about
this,” we reply: “No. You're not ready to face the truth. We are
no longer in partnership with you.” And, we withdraw. We disenroll.
We divest ourselves and our future from madness. We quit our jobs. We
take care of each other, and we cut demand off at the tap.
I'll
leave it to you to find the flaws in Epstein's arguments (and there
are many). People: these are not the debates we should still be
having. I would have been happier if McKibben, once he discovered
that Epstein was going to dredge up this debunked drivel, fail to
address McKibben's statistics in detail, and generally build an ad
hominem attack against McKibben through repeating this one, scary
message that McKibben was out to deprive poor people of food (this is
such a terribly ironic and malicious projection of consequences from
the fossil-fuel industry's own practices in poorer countries of the
world, where they have plundered resources while decimating the
environment, depriving locals of traditional food sources).... well,
I wish McKibben had just walked off the stage, saying, “Let me know
when you want to have a real debate.” Yes, I understand that
McKibben got his two minutes here and there to present the terrible
present reality of advancing climate change to those who would
listen, but his ongoing participation in the “debate” lent
credibility to the whole event, as if this really was a powerful,
substantive combat of ideas. For shame. We climate activists need to
keep our eye on the ball, and not get faked out by curveballs and
change-ups that slow-pitch the true nature of this climate crisis.
Good eye, good eye.
