Climate Change: End Game Or a Second Chance?

CLIMATE CHANGE: END GAME OR A SECOND CHANCE?

Joanna Clark and Thea Iberall, Ph.D.*

Species adapt or they go extinct. And the rate at which we're causing change in the environment, living species don't have the time to adapt. It is true that there have been other inhospitable times on Earth. Take the Permian-Triassic mass extinctions, for example. They combined to produce the largest mass extinction in Earth's history. This accounted for a staggering 90-96% loss of life. All life on Earth today is descended from the estimated 4% of species that survived this mass extinction.

Needless to say, it was a bad day in Black Rock. But that's the point and what climate change deniers fail to acknowledge. These "inhospitable" mass extinction events lasted more than a million years, not the current hundreds of years that we're causing through our man-made impact on Climate Change/Global Warming. There was time to adapt through the process of evolutionary natural selection.

The population of our species has grown. Today we number more than seven billion and by 2050, we are expected to exceed nine billion on a planet that can under normal conditions sustain two billion. As a consequence of our population growth, we are changing the planet over the course of a few hundred years, not millions of years, and there is little time for species, including ourselves, to adapt. Since 1980, more than 3,100,000 lives have been lost worldwide to extended heat waves, droughts, loss of crops, severe storms, and loss of fresh water. Additionally, scientists estimate that 150-200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become extinct every 24 hours. Many biologists, believe this extinction rate is greater than anything the world has experienced since the vanishing of the dinosaurs nearly 65 million years ago.

The effects of Green House Gases are not new news. In 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius was aware of the warming effect of excess carbon dioxide and predicted that increasing the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from human activity would result in a warming trend. The issue hasn't crept up unexpectedly. In 1769 when the Watt engine was invented, concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere were about 278 parts per million (ppm). Almost one hundred years later in 1859, when the first oil well was dug, it was about 282 ppm. Pretty slow change. One hundred years after that, in 1950 when the leaf blower was invented, the CO2 was about 310 ppm, and on May 9, 2013, atmospheric CO2 exceeded 400 ppm. That's the biggest and fastest change in atmospheric CO2 in more than 800,000 years. Get it?

The Congressional naysayers will repeatedly state that, despite the accumulated evidence, they do not believe we puny humans can have a global effect on climate. They say that it is strictly a natural cycle of freeze and melt, but one only has to look at human history; it could not be any clearer. We have a history of altering the planet’s climate on huge or massive scales: ongoing desertification due to deforestation, the dust bowl in the US in the 1930's, the unbearable smog of the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s, or the ozone hole of the 1970's.

Desertification and Deforestation

"Deforestation is the permanent destruction of forests in order to make the land available for other uses. An estimated 18 million acres (7.3 million hectares) of forest, which is roughly the size of the country of Panama, are lost each year," according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Mar 4, 2015. Forests are complex ecosystems that affect almost every species on the planet. When they are degraded, it can set off a devastating chain of events both locally and around the world, including, but not limited to: Loss of habitat and species, disruption of water cycle, soil erosion, leading to silt entering lakes and streams, flooding and landslide issues, and decrease in quality of life. For more information on deforestation and its effects on climate and desertification, click here.

The Dust Bowl: 1920s -1940

The dust bowl was nature’s response to the mechanized farming practices that massively uprooted the grassland prairies starting in the early 1920’s. By 1932, 14 dust storms, known as black blizzards were reported, and in just one year, the number increased to nearly 40. Wind carried that choking dust from the mid-West as far as Washington DC.

Air Pollution (SMOG): 1940 -1975

The first recorded incident of smog enveloping Los Angeles occurred in the early 1940s. It was severe enough that some people suspected a chemical attack. Individuals with respiratory or cardiovascular problems were severely affected.

Essentially a chemical reaction between sunlight, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds in the atmosphere, smog is a product of smoke and fumes from steel and chemical plants, oil refineries, backyard trash incinerators and automobile exhaust.

In an effort to combat smog, backyard incinerators were banned in the 50s, but it wasn’t until 1975 that the U.S. required new cars to have catalytic converters, the key piece of technology that led to a significant reduction in smog.

Ozone depletion and chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs

The depletion of ozone when chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)—formerly found in aerosol spray cans and refrigerants—were released into the atmosphere. These gases, through several chemical reactions, cause the ozone molecules to break down, reducing ozone's ultraviolet (UV) radiation-absorbing capacity. They are long-lived and can remain in the atmosphere for decades to over a century.

These are just four examples of how we have effected the environment.

Do the changes that we are witnessing mean the end of civilization as we know it? Possibly! It all depends on us and the decisions we make in the very near future.

Four years ago, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that over the past decade "[t]he rate of rising oceans has doubled, the heat temperatures for both land and water are on the rise, the melting of the Arctic ice is speeding up, and both the weather extremes the world is experiencing and the overall global warming trends are simply 'unprecedented,'" and they warned that "we better get ready for more." Research published in the March 2016 issue of Nature, a peer-reviewed science journal, indicated “sea levels could rise nearly twice as much as previously predicted by the end of this century if carbon dioxide emissions continue unabated, an outcome that could devastate coastal communities around the globe.” This past March James Hansen, a NASA scientist who is extremely influential in the study of climate change, estimated that seas could rise by seven meters in the coming century, a figure that would likely decimate coastal communities, if proved accurate.

Ben Strauss, director of the program on sea level rise at Climate Central, an independent organization of scientists based in New Jersey, commented that “should the new research prove correct, it could trigger a 'tectonic shift' in expectations for the speed and severity of the sea level problem. While the study’s findings represent potentially grave problems for many coastal areas in the decades ahead, the century beginning in 2100 could see truly catastrophic shifts, unless societies make sharp cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.”

The bottom line is that climate change, driven by global warming, is already transforming life on Earth. Around the globe, seasons are shifting, temperatures are climbing and sea levels are rising. And meanwhile, our planet must still supply us – and all living things – with air, water, food and safe places to live. If we don't act now, climate change will rapidly alter the lands and waters we all depend upon for survival, leaving our children and grandchildren with a very different world.

As the Climate Emergency Coalition (CEC) recently pointed out, “[n]early all of the major problems our world faces today worsen and multiply due to escalating global warming. All of the ecological, economic and political problems listed below will cross-intensify and therefore worsen as average global temperatures rises.

> Food and resource depletion
> Severe droughts, floods, and wildfires
> Rising sea levels
> Water pollution and water table loss
> Desertification and deforestation
> Ocean fish stock depletions
> Growing economic inequity, poverty, and instability
> Political instability and injustice
> War and regional conflicts
> Increasing potential of pandemics and other health crises

Despite more than 30 years of education, study, and discussion about the possible irreversible effects of human-caused carbon and methane pollution of our atmosphere, global warming temperatures have escalated to levels that may have already passed or be close to passing global warming tipping points with impacts that are irreversible.

The questions to ask yourself are “Which one will have the most impact on my life, or on the places I care about?” and “What can I do to help mitigate the changes that are coming?”

Steps towards a solution

One way to begin turning this around is with a national revenue-neutral carbon tax. A revenue-neutral tax could be defined as a tax where the proceeds collected by the government are distributed between individuals and families earning less than the current poverty level.

David Suzuki points out that "pricing carbon emissions through a carbon tax is one of the most powerful incentives that governments have to encourage companies and households to pollute less by investing in cleaner technologies and adopting greener practices."

Republican critics claim that a carbon tax would have a negative effect on our economy. This could theoretically happen but it is succeeding elsewhere. Also, to do nothing to contain CO2 emissions would have a devastating impact on the future economy, multitudes greater than any carbon tax could possibly render.

Sweden imposed a carbon tax in 1991, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent. Sweden's economy has grown since then.

British Columbia (BC) implemented a revenue-neutral Carbon tax in July 2008. Since then, “BC’s consumption of petroleum fuels has fallen by 16.4% relative to the rest of Canada.” Over the same period, “economic growth in BC has been slightly better than the rest of Canada, so the pessimistic forecasts that the carbon tax would cripple the economy have not materialized.” Chris Mooney, Mother Jones (Mar 26, 2014)

If properly implemented here, a revenue neutral carbon tax could have a similar effect on our economy while reducing our carbon footprint.

Of course, we need to simultaneously end the current subsidies to the oil and gas cartels, redirecting them to research, development and deployment of renewable energy technologies.

Steps towards a solution on the local level

Look at what is happening in California cities such as Lancaster and Sebastopol. Sebastopol expanded on Lancaster's solar ordinance by requiring “all new homes and businesses to include solar systems that provide 2 watts of photovoltaic-derived power per square foot of insulated building area.” According to the Press Democrat, "the system must offset at least 75 percent of the building's total annual electric load. Homes and businesses constructed in areas where solar isn't possible must either pay a fee or look into other means of alternative energy." We need to pressure every city council in Southern California to follow their lead. Orange County, with it’s sunny climate most of the year, seems an obvious choice to implement widespread solar energy.

Another stab at a solution is what's happening in Lincoln and Rocklin. These cities have implemented neighborhood electric vehicle (NEV) friendly ordinances. NEV's are restricted to streets with a speed limit of 35 mph or less. Local businesses quickly realized that NEV owners bought local, and they installed recharging stations for their NEV customers. At least mandate charging stations for the new electric vehicles that are beginning to appear on our city streets across the nation.

Sacramento, Fairfield, Riverside and Santa Ana “have recognized that close to half of the urban landscape in the United States is dedicated to automobiles, about 20% reserved for parking alone. With land becoming an increasingly scarce resource, attention has turned toward making parking lots more productive urban features, serving multiple functions rather than only providing space for cars that sit idle 95% of the time.”

Parking lots provide an unparalleled opportunity for generating clean, renewable energy through installation of photovoltaic (PV). PV carports provide highly desirable shade for parked cars and can “help improve air quality by reducing parking lot temperatures, thereby reducing hydrocarbon emissions from gasoline that evaporates from leaky fuel tanks and worn hoses.”

The largest parking lot solar system in the world is located at Cal Expo, in Sacramento. The 540-kilowatt system produces enough energy to power about 180 homes. The solar arrays, mounted on solar-tracking devices, provide shaded parking for 1,000 cars and serve as a stunning display of parking lot PV potential. The energy produced by the arrays is fed into Sacramento Municipal Utility District’s (SMUD) grid for distribution to its Greenergy customers.

The Riverside Utilities Operations Center is providing shade for 152 parking spaces with a new solar carport. The 113-kW PV array generates clean, renewable energy that helps reduce afternoon peaking demand and reduces the City’s dependence on outside electricity sources.

The abundance of large parking lots can be considered a resource, as these sites are particularly well-suited for large-scale PV installations that support goals of municipal energy independence.

Cities in every state can study and implement their version of these examples. Climate change is a global problem and we can turn this around if we all pitch in.

C'mon, what do you say? Adapt or go extinct.

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*Dr. Thea Iberall is the author of the novel "The Swallow and the Nightingale".