written 29 January 2023
published 5 February 2023
Despite high mountains and deep oceans, the Earth is smoother than a cue ball. If a cue ball is dipped in water, the resulting layer of moisture represents our atmosphere. Like a neighbor pounding of your door, saying your house is on fire, while you are having a party, Al Gore gave an impassioned climate speech a few weeks ago, at the 2023 World Economic Forum, excerpted here.
"We’re not winning. The crisis is still getting worse faster than we are deploying solutions, and we need to make changes quickly. Emissions are still going up. When are we going to bring these emissions down? People are familiar with that thin blue line in the pictures from space that the astronauts bring back. That’s the part of the atmosphere that has oxygen, the troposphere, and it’s only 5 to 7 miles thick. That’s what we’re using as an open sewer. If you could drive a car straight up in the air at interstate highway speeds, you’d get to the top of that blue line in 5 minutes, and all the greenhouse gas pollution would be below you."
"We’re still putting 162 million tons (of carbon dioxide) into it every single day, and the accumulated amount is now trapping as much extra heat as would be released by 600,000 Hiroshima class atomic bombs exploding every single day on the Earth (7 per second!). That’s what’s creating these atmospheric rivers, and sucking the moisture out of the land, and creating the droughts, and melting the ice, and raising the sea level, and causing these waves of climate refugees predicted to reach one billion in this century. Look at the xenophobia and the political authoritarian trends that have come from just a few million refugees. What about a billion? We would lose our capacity for self-governance on this world. We have to act."
"We have to have a sense of urgency. We have a divide between those who are old enough to be in positions of power, and the young people of this world who are looking at what we’re doing. They say, "You’ve got a climate denier in charge of the World Bank, so why are you surprised that the World Bank is completely failing to do its job? Are you okay with putting the CEO of one of the largest oil companies in the world in as the President of the COP (climate conference)?" The appearance of a conflict of interest undermines confidence at a time when climate activists around the world have come to the conclusion that the people in authority are not doing their job!"
This year, the Colorado River flow has diminished to the point that Lake Mead and Lake Powell will soon hit "dead pool", unable to release water downstream, affecting tens of millions. A community outside Phoenix now has no water, destroying the value of their million-dollar homes. California wildfires are increasing insurance rates, as are hurricanes in Florida, threatening the viability of those housing markets. The drought in California is shrinking the farming economy, adding to food prices and decreasing availability. As our environment heats, our entire wine industry faces replanting their vines to more heat tolerant varieties. The latest research on the collapsing Antarctica glaciers suggests a sea level rise of 20' by the end of the century, assuming emissions stabilize now. Temperatures in Europe were in the 70's this winter. In parts of Alaska the shoreline is retreating 70' each year as lack of sea ice exposes the land to wave action. Offshore of Mendocino, the warming ocean has disrupted the ecology and destroyed the essential kelp forest and dependent fisheries. Torrential rainfall inundates communities with increasing regularity. Exxon-Mobile lied about the climate impact of their products for half a century, grossing trillions.
People who are paying attention are alarmed, and dismayed at the general lack of concern. It is no wonder that Gore was so passionate in his comments to world economic leaders. When I searched online for a transcript of Gore's speech, all I found were numerous "news" reports about Gore's "unhinged" comments. Unhinged! Talk about killing the messenger.
Like a bunch of mindless frogs, sitting in slowly heating water, we are more concerned with celebrity gossip and the sexuality of M&M's than the fact that, without concerted action, our entire economy could collapse before kids today can retire.
