written 16 Jan 2022
published 23 Jan 2022
In 2017, Scripps Institution of Oceanography reported "business as usual" risks a 1 in 4 chance of human extinction by 2067, due to extreme climate change. Half of all the fossil fuels humanity ever consumed were burned within the last 30 years, with consumption increasing every year. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is currently 416 ppm, last this high 3 million years ago.
The last seven years have been the hottest on record. This week it was reported that 2021 was the 6th hottest year, with the 20 largest US weather disasters costing over $145B. By 2030, we will experience 50 more record breaking hot days each summer.
The oceans, now the hottest on record, trap 93 percent of the extra heat, with measurable heat increase a mile deep. The annual heating is the equivalent of 7 Hiroshima atom bombs going off every second, all year long.
The climate crisis is real. It is already here. It will only get worse. It won't go away by magic. Last summer, the IPCC warned that humanity must reduce carbon emissions 50 percent by 2030, to have a chance of keeping a habitable planet.
The movie "Don't Look Up", which has been streaming on Netflix for the last few weeks, is one their most popular ever. This satirical comedy describes efforts to get the planet to deal with an incoming comet, which is expected to hit the planet, an extinction level event. Written as a parody on the climate crisis, but unfolding over a matter of months rather than decades, it points out the suicidal lunacy of our current culture, which is obsessed with money and fame, to the point of ignoring or denying reality.
In a recent interview, co-director Adam McKay stated that the climate crisis is so significant it should be considered somewhere between "the tension during the Cuban missile crisis and the beginning of the bombing of London early in WW2". It is that potentially destructive and that imminent. But in America, we can't even get modest funding through the Senate. The climate deniers are thriving, spreading doubt and misinformation in order to preserve a few more years of profit.
Some years ago, there was a letter to the editor of the UDJ from a local climate denier. There was a long list of arguments about how it can't be real, it was just a hoax by greedy scientist, it wasn't manmade. The final conclusion was nothing could be done about it anyway, moving directly from denial to despair, without ever once actually consider the issue.
How bad does it have to get before we begin to respond with the requisite social and economic magnitude? Do climate disaster costs have to increase to $500B a year, or a trillion dollars? Six in ten Americans are already concerned about the climate crisis, but the people who control the economy and politics haven't been affected yet, so little happens, and even modest efforts are fought at every step. Look at the current PUC efforts by investor-owned utilities to kill roof top solar.
It reminds me of the movie Jaws. The mayor of Amity denies the existence of the shark out of short-term economic concerns. He only changes his tune when he personally sees the shark and realizes his own son could have been killed.
Directly looking at the situation takes courage. A first step is a declaration of climate emergency. Over 1,900 governments around the world have already passed such a declaration, including 53 in California. Mendocino County and the City of Ukiah are not yet on that list.
A more substantial step would be embracing the goal of reducing carbon emissions by 50 percent in the next 96 months. We would have to reduce consumption, triple our electrical production, and make massive hardware investments in transportation and heating. This will be expensive and disruptive, but talk with someone who has raced out of their house with only the clothes they were wearing, to escape a firestorm. That is expensive and disruptive as well. The whole planet is facing such a firestorm.
This will take a level of coordinated action that is hard to imagine these days. But despite our apparent differences, we really are all in this together, and this lovely planet is worth the effort. What are we waiting for?
