A good friend of mine who is a voracious reader believes that we're already past tipping points that cannot be reversed with even the most aggressive approach to conversion from fossil fuels. He points to the tundra, thawing of permafrost with the potential to release magnitudes more CO2 than any fossil fuel consumption over the coming decades. He points to the approximately 2 billion earthlings who still cook over wood fires and heat their humble dwellings with firewood. He points to population growth in places that use wood and charcoal outstripping the rate at which technology might liberate them from dependence on biomass burning. There doesn't appear to be a silver lining in that cloud. What is going to save us? The biggest volcanic eruption you can imagine? That solar "sail" the dreamers have been talking about? Another meteor the size of the one that doomed the dinasaurs? I ask myself "what can I do?" Well, my vehicle gets 40+ mpg, which is pretty good for the current moment. Better yet, I drive far less than I once did. I have two e-bikes, underutilized. I bought a heat pump. I'm replacing my windows with a modern insulated variety. I'm investigating rooftop solar systems. I've stopped mowing my lawn, am enjoying the meadow flowers that apparently also live amongst the grass. Now I need a goat or some giant bunnies to keep recycling all that high grass. These are items that are within my personal grasp. Is this enough? Should they give me hope?
Is it mere gestures after the proverbial horse is already out of the barn? We've had 50 Earth Days already. That obviously wasn't enough to motivate us to swifter action. 25 global climate summits haven't managed to put us on a true emergency footing. My best strategy is to focus on what's right in front of me and try to avoid a sort of "global despair" that only takes about 15 minutes to conjure up if I spend that much time thinking about it.
I’m in agreement about our chances. I’m not a scientist although I revere science, I'm just a woman with long antenna so to speak. I sense it’s part of why world leaders are so bonkers and why we must be able to return to the discussion of fixing what we can and protecting what we can. The aggression has helpful measures stymied and I cannot imagine what all the exploding booms are doing to our earth and atmosphere. Emotionally, I’m feeling frustrated and angry. It’s not by accident, as angry frustrated people give up. Covering up for the greed, whatever it is called its death served up as some kind of fun. Take a vacation, drive around in a fun car. A personal gripe I’d like to share are big weddings or any corporate getaway meant as thanks to big deal employees. Meetings and professional play dates of the like. The trucks that deliver tables and chairs, linen, etc, all rented to personal specs. No less than three times weekly to a “venue”. Destinations, people fly and drive, buy extra small toothpaste and cream for the plane. Many of these excursions were suspended by the pandemic, but pushed hard to start again, anger around masks messing up nice get togethers. I’d love to blame the people that really hold more power of what corporations do, but people… if I hadn’t seen it up close for myself, so many are selfish and willfully selfish and clueless. For clarity, I’m retired, but owned and ran a mom and pop florist shop. P.S., people pay big money for their alcohol tab, and demure on flowers for the tables. The crowds I served and got to know a little, do not have the same concerns in life. I’d imagine, most my clientele were Republican or leaning that way pre maga. Yeah, there was a time. Thank you Eliot for the article. My first concern as a teen was pollution. I also recall as a kid, the poop and litter laws were first instituted in Manhattan. Before, people smoked and threw their butts where they walked. Same with gum wrappers and whatever. We often did “the doggie shuffle” if we weren’t agile enough to dodge the poop. The hurdles are higher but I’m not sure if we have learnt to jump any higher.
My first concern as a child of 8 was injustice, prompted by the situation of a boy my age on the other side of the world. I'm still concerned about in justice.
Thank you Elliot. As a science major, I first learned about the warming climate and the possible future ravages if we didn't "fix" it. But in 1970 the changing climate would give us at least 100 years to clean things up.
And here we are today, roughly 50 years later, having passed the point of no return. The best we can hope for is mitigation and that ONLY if we have full on global cooperation.
Now into the mix we have, as you said, the truly selfish (I got mine, I don't care about yours) and the utterly stupid (it's just a theory the scientists can't even agree - of course that was 50 years ago).
Phrases like 'carbon footprint' are meaningless to most people. Irresponsible policies like carbon off-set tax or cap or tradeoff do nothing. Allowing a corporation to "buy" the right to continue polluting is a foul fantasy.
What the hell are you going to do with all that money? Beg the sun to stop nuclear fusion for a hundred years so we can pollute a little longer?
The Public Utilitiies Commission in California is a big joke. They slap PG&E and Southern Edison on the wrist, but allow them to keep raking in obscene profits while they refuse to maintain their power lines. They used to hire private airlines to patrol the California forests daily to sight small fires, downed lines.
Back then most of the large forest fires occurred in the hunting season caused by careless hunters. Now most of the fires (and gas line explosions) are caused by poorly maintained power lines and gas lines.
It took years to convince the government to reel in the auto manufacturing industry to lower the high polluting cars. Now the situation is so bad the best we can hope for is increased use of electric vehicles.
Unless we get serious TODAY for many of you there will be no future. You don't like immigrants? Baby you ain't seen nothing yet. In the not too distant future Homo sapiens world wide including the denizens of the US will be desperately trying to find a safe place to live and survive.
Will the planet be destroyed? No. Will humans cease to exist? No. My biggest fear is the wrong ones will survive, the Elon Musk's and Donald Trump's of this world will start the vicious cycle all over again.
We were the young ones once and we didn’t make any difference to anything or if we did it has all been or is being taken away again by Trump, various religious beliefs, greedy companies and CEOs.
I am so sick of politicians in every so called civilised country and wars everywhere that could have been avoided by decent birth control worldwide .
Too many people, not enough land. The have too much and the have nothing at all.
I am a Pom living in Australia. I cannot stand the Royals apart from Harry and Megan.
I am a leftie and proud of it. I have been an underpaid and undervalued nurse for 50 years and now that I am finally retired on a modest income, I have time to consider world affairs including climate change.
When we were young we were too busy having fun, listening to music, reading literature and despising wars.
I doubt whether much has changed.
The wars are just in different places, the politicians just as useless but the world is still having sex and reproducing at the same rate.
Too many people and not enough to go around.
I had a lot of sex but didn’t add to the population but almost everyone else I know did.
American Consumerism and now Chinese industrialisation. Of course it was always going to go to Hell and we are well on our way!
We human beings need to remember that we are only a part of all the living beings! And, that we are all inextricably connected. Resilience will be the only way we survive what is unfolding - our own resilience, and that of the creatures, plants, ecosystems around us. I'm afraid our arrogance as a species has led to this moment; our humility and ingenuity may yet save some version of the world as we know it. Thank you, Elliot, for today's posting. Climate issues, along with democracy, need to be #1 on the debate docket.
My husband and I went to SF every summer while our grandsons were growing up there, always brought jackets and always needed them. Miss that time. It’s 100° in Denver today.
“…how the polluters and those who profit from them co-opted both the Republican Party and the truth…” The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the polluter appeal for the Uinta Basin Railway case. If the polluters win, millions of tons of crude oil will travel through the Colorado mountains from Utah on existing rails that follow the Colorado River, the river that is a main water source for seven states. What could go wrong? It’ll create jobs, help local economies, they say. As short-sighted as ever.
One of those grandsons starts his senior year at Bard this fall, tells us that position on climate is his number one consideration in voting. You are right. Young people give us hope.
First people need to see themselves embedded in nested worlds, me ) we ) many ) all life ) a lonely blue planet ) universe. We need the capacity to think about how the relationship among these worlds WORKS... HOW Earth does what she does and how our role in serving that work operates. We care for that which we care about. Historically religion has played the role of helping us enshrine that which is necessary to serve larger wholes, thus survive. (think sacred cows). Since much religiosity has abandoned that role we are left with material science to look to a Sacred Mother Earth and teach us how to give her what she needs.
Thanks Andrew. That creator is a few nested world beyond the Earth, AND a few nested worlds atoms ) molecules ) cells ) organs ) body ) inside us, serving us. Somewhere between the two aspects of the creator are worlds that we affect more directly. That is the work we must do to serve the creator you seems to be speaking of. Even if one is an atheist one can see what work is their to do, simply by becoming aware of relatedness... how reciprocal maintenance is organized. Response?
Abundant green electricity priced at half the cost of fossil fuel. Use taxes; use subsidies, but get it done. We are never going to use less energy. Our only current path is nuclear. Yes, it has a waste problem, but for now it is our only solution. We must continue to research cleaner methods. All this other chat is just a waste of time.
Thanks for supporting my memory with this statement: "'global warming,' as it was commonly referred to at the time, was still treated by many reporters, producers, and executives as a matter of legitimate scientific debate." Fifty years ago, when working on what was called "the underground press," we deeply researched stories about what was going to happen. The "environmental writers" in our cadre were sort of scorned by, say, the anti-war and anti-poverty writers. A few decades ago, when the news was emerging (again), a writer for a Seattle paper quoted a University of Washington professor saying that global warming didn't exist. I wrote directly to him to ask what was up with that, and he excoriated me for believing that "normal" changes in weather, etc, meant anything. You recall the argument, because you're citing it. Even five years ago or so, the Guardian started a series on the environment, and I noted it quickly shut down, perhaps due to lack of interest even now. The horrors of wildfires, drought, bird and mammal species vanishing, people dying from heat and fire and drought and starvation all over the world, and the instability that brings to all aspects of life might finally be waking at least some of us up.
Most people seem not to have a clue, want to see a clue, or the truth, about the climate change/crisis. They fall behind the wall of denial, divert and divide. Until or unless humanity comes together to stem and stall the trend toward self-destruction, the do nothing people will have nothing to do and nowhere to live. No one wants to hear that either. The evidence does not favor our survival as a species.
Lots of whining and gnashing of teeth. “ Need to learn to live like most nations in the undeveloped world”? There’s the rub, isn’t it. It’s all about power and control. And arrogance!! Human activity might influence climate, but there’s no way we can control it. I’m all in with clean energy, clean water, clean air. My support ends when we start talking about lowering people’s standards of living. The author feels guilty about living in a cool climate when 200 miles south of SF people are boiling?? Well they didn’t call it “Death Valley” for nothing. If you don’t like the heat, MOVE!!!!
In the 1960s we lived in Santa Ana California, south of Los Angeles, in a brand new tract house with no air conditioning. In the winter I could see Mt. Baldy from my front yard. Today that house would be air conditioned because it is just too warm in Southern California. For me there is no “grinding or gnashing of teeth”. Only tears.
The privileged developed nations of the world MUST make the biggest changes in our lifestyles (even basic things such as even using tumble dryers and then using chemical products to make clothes smell nice!) and need to learn to live like most people in the underdeveloped countries and the same time finance the people in underdeveloped to be compensated for the damage caused by the developed countries for the last two hundred years!
If this doesn’t happen the human race is DOOMED, the planet will survive and just maybe AI ROBOTS will take over!
Denial is an endemic human disease that is made worse by fear of the obvious extreme weather and the disinformation spread by the privileged that goes unchecked by the main media. Science and scientists are attacked when they present the facts. The entire process harms the good of all.
"Climate and democracy are the most significant threats we face because if we don’t fearlessly tackle them, we will cease to have the means to address all else that ails us."
Combine shareholder value, a Hatfield vs McCoy democracy, and a need to sustain an adversarial, quasi militaristic relationship with China, and you've got a pretty weak structure for taking on global warming in a materialistic, as opposed to rhetorical, way.
EVs provide a good case. China is a major producer of EVs, from super luxury models, down to small simple models that sell for as little as $5000. But opening the US market to these offerings is akin to trading with the enemy and undermining the US auto industry. Therefore, Mr Biden imposed a 100% import duty on Chinese EVs. There is little doubt that converting our auto/light truck/SUV fleet to EVs will make a substantial decrease in our greenhouse gas emissions. Just what we are after.But the EVs on the US market typically cost in well in excess of $40,000 (recent average price $55,000).
So the well to do can afford them, but not so much for the rest of us, and the climate,
A good friend of mine who is a voracious reader believes that we're already past tipping points that cannot be reversed with even the most aggressive approach to conversion from fossil fuels. He points to the tundra, thawing of permafrost with the potential to release magnitudes more CO2 than any fossil fuel consumption over the coming decades. He points to the approximately 2 billion earthlings who still cook over wood fires and heat their humble dwellings with firewood. He points to population growth in places that use wood and charcoal outstripping the rate at which technology might liberate them from dependence on biomass burning. There doesn't appear to be a silver lining in that cloud. What is going to save us? The biggest volcanic eruption you can imagine? That solar "sail" the dreamers have been talking about? Another meteor the size of the one that doomed the dinasaurs? I ask myself "what can I do?" Well, my vehicle gets 40+ mpg, which is pretty good for the current moment. Better yet, I drive far less than I once did. I have two e-bikes, underutilized. I bought a heat pump. I'm replacing my windows with a modern insulated variety. I'm investigating rooftop solar systems. I've stopped mowing my lawn, am enjoying the meadow flowers that apparently also live amongst the grass. Now I need a goat or some giant bunnies to keep recycling all that high grass. These are items that are within my personal grasp. Is this enough? Should they give me hope?
Is it mere gestures after the proverbial horse is already out of the barn? We've had 50 Earth Days already. That obviously wasn't enough to motivate us to swifter action. 25 global climate summits haven't managed to put us on a true emergency footing. My best strategy is to focus on what's right in front of me and try to avoid a sort of "global despair" that only takes about 15 minutes to conjure up if I spend that much time thinking about it.
I’m in agreement about our chances. I’m not a scientist although I revere science, I'm just a woman with long antenna so to speak. I sense it’s part of why world leaders are so bonkers and why we must be able to return to the discussion of fixing what we can and protecting what we can. The aggression has helpful measures stymied and I cannot imagine what all the exploding booms are doing to our earth and atmosphere. Emotionally, I’m feeling frustrated and angry. It’s not by accident, as angry frustrated people give up. Covering up for the greed, whatever it is called its death served up as some kind of fun. Take a vacation, drive around in a fun car. A personal gripe I’d like to share are big weddings or any corporate getaway meant as thanks to big deal employees. Meetings and professional play dates of the like. The trucks that deliver tables and chairs, linen, etc, all rented to personal specs. No less than three times weekly to a “venue”. Destinations, people fly and drive, buy extra small toothpaste and cream for the plane. Many of these excursions were suspended by the pandemic, but pushed hard to start again, anger around masks messing up nice get togethers. I’d love to blame the people that really hold more power of what corporations do, but people… if I hadn’t seen it up close for myself, so many are selfish and willfully selfish and clueless. For clarity, I’m retired, but owned and ran a mom and pop florist shop. P.S., people pay big money for their alcohol tab, and demure on flowers for the tables. The crowds I served and got to know a little, do not have the same concerns in life. I’d imagine, most my clientele were Republican or leaning that way pre maga. Yeah, there was a time. Thank you Eliot for the article. My first concern as a teen was pollution. I also recall as a kid, the poop and litter laws were first instituted in Manhattan. Before, people smoked and threw their butts where they walked. Same with gum wrappers and whatever. We often did “the doggie shuffle” if we weren’t agile enough to dodge the poop. The hurdles are higher but I’m not sure if we have learnt to jump any higher.
My first concern as a child of 8 was injustice, prompted by the situation of a boy my age on the other side of the world. I'm still concerned about in justice.
We really know who we are at a deep level as youngsters and are very wise. My wish is that adults would listen better, sooner.
50 Earth Days. It could take another 50, if humans are alive for that long.
Thank you Elliot. As a science major, I first learned about the warming climate and the possible future ravages if we didn't "fix" it. But in 1970 the changing climate would give us at least 100 years to clean things up.
And here we are today, roughly 50 years later, having passed the point of no return. The best we can hope for is mitigation and that ONLY if we have full on global cooperation.
Now into the mix we have, as you said, the truly selfish (I got mine, I don't care about yours) and the utterly stupid (it's just a theory the scientists can't even agree - of course that was 50 years ago).
Phrases like 'carbon footprint' are meaningless to most people. Irresponsible policies like carbon off-set tax or cap or tradeoff do nothing. Allowing a corporation to "buy" the right to continue polluting is a foul fantasy.
What the hell are you going to do with all that money? Beg the sun to stop nuclear fusion for a hundred years so we can pollute a little longer?
The Public Utilitiies Commission in California is a big joke. They slap PG&E and Southern Edison on the wrist, but allow them to keep raking in obscene profits while they refuse to maintain their power lines. They used to hire private airlines to patrol the California forests daily to sight small fires, downed lines.
Back then most of the large forest fires occurred in the hunting season caused by careless hunters. Now most of the fires (and gas line explosions) are caused by poorly maintained power lines and gas lines.
It took years to convince the government to reel in the auto manufacturing industry to lower the high polluting cars. Now the situation is so bad the best we can hope for is increased use of electric vehicles.
Unless we get serious TODAY for many of you there will be no future. You don't like immigrants? Baby you ain't seen nothing yet. In the not too distant future Homo sapiens world wide including the denizens of the US will be desperately trying to find a safe place to live and survive.
Will the planet be destroyed? No. Will humans cease to exist? No. My biggest fear is the wrong ones will survive, the Elon Musk's and Donald Trump's of this world will start the vicious cycle all over again.
We were the young ones once and we didn’t make any difference to anything or if we did it has all been or is being taken away again by Trump, various religious beliefs, greedy companies and CEOs.
I am so sick of politicians in every so called civilised country and wars everywhere that could have been avoided by decent birth control worldwide .
Too many people, not enough land. The have too much and the have nothing at all.
I am a Pom living in Australia. I cannot stand the Royals apart from Harry and Megan.
I am a leftie and proud of it. I have been an underpaid and undervalued nurse for 50 years and now that I am finally retired on a modest income, I have time to consider world affairs including climate change.
When we were young we were too busy having fun, listening to music, reading literature and despising wars.
I doubt whether much has changed.
The wars are just in different places, the politicians just as useless but the world is still having sex and reproducing at the same rate.
Too many people and not enough to go around.
I had a lot of sex but didn’t add to the population but almost everyone else I know did.
American Consumerism and now Chinese industrialisation. Of course it was always going to go to Hell and we are well on our way!
We human beings need to remember that we are only a part of all the living beings! And, that we are all inextricably connected. Resilience will be the only way we survive what is unfolding - our own resilience, and that of the creatures, plants, ecosystems around us. I'm afraid our arrogance as a species has led to this moment; our humility and ingenuity may yet save some version of the world as we know it. Thank you, Elliot, for today's posting. Climate issues, along with democracy, need to be #1 on the debate docket.
My husband and I went to SF every summer while our grandsons were growing up there, always brought jackets and always needed them. Miss that time. It’s 100° in Denver today.
“…how the polluters and those who profit from them co-opted both the Republican Party and the truth…” The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the polluter appeal for the Uinta Basin Railway case. If the polluters win, millions of tons of crude oil will travel through the Colorado mountains from Utah on existing rails that follow the Colorado River, the river that is a main water source for seven states. What could go wrong? It’ll create jobs, help local economies, they say. As short-sighted as ever.
One of those grandsons starts his senior year at Bard this fall, tells us that position on climate is his number one consideration in voting. You are right. Young people give us hope.
First people need to see themselves embedded in nested worlds, me ) we ) many ) all life ) a lonely blue planet ) universe. We need the capacity to think about how the relationship among these worlds WORKS... HOW Earth does what she does and how our role in serving that work operates. We care for that which we care about. Historically religion has played the role of helping us enshrine that which is necessary to serve larger wholes, thus survive. (think sacred cows). Since much religiosity has abandoned that role we are left with material science to look to a Sacred Mother Earth and teach us how to give her what she needs.
I'm sorry this is deleted, it was such a valid and wonderful response.
Thanks Andrew. That creator is a few nested world beyond the Earth, AND a few nested worlds atoms ) molecules ) cells ) organs ) body ) inside us, serving us. Somewhere between the two aspects of the creator are worlds that we affect more directly. That is the work we must do to serve the creator you seems to be speaking of. Even if one is an atheist one can see what work is their to do, simply by becoming aware of relatedness... how reciprocal maintenance is organized. Response?
Abundant green electricity priced at half the cost of fossil fuel. Use taxes; use subsidies, but get it done. We are never going to use less energy. Our only current path is nuclear. Yes, it has a waste problem, but for now it is our only solution. We must continue to research cleaner methods. All this other chat is just a waste of time.
Right. Vote. No time to waste!
. . . And what a con, for sure.
Thank you. Thank you. I just don’t understand their reluctance to accept facts.
Thanks. Really good points that are getting lost in the whirlwind of lies that constitute much of "reporting" lately.
Thanks for supporting my memory with this statement: "'global warming,' as it was commonly referred to at the time, was still treated by many reporters, producers, and executives as a matter of legitimate scientific debate." Fifty years ago, when working on what was called "the underground press," we deeply researched stories about what was going to happen. The "environmental writers" in our cadre were sort of scorned by, say, the anti-war and anti-poverty writers. A few decades ago, when the news was emerging (again), a writer for a Seattle paper quoted a University of Washington professor saying that global warming didn't exist. I wrote directly to him to ask what was up with that, and he excoriated me for believing that "normal" changes in weather, etc, meant anything. You recall the argument, because you're citing it. Even five years ago or so, the Guardian started a series on the environment, and I noted it quickly shut down, perhaps due to lack of interest even now. The horrors of wildfires, drought, bird and mammal species vanishing, people dying from heat and fire and drought and starvation all over the world, and the instability that brings to all aspects of life might finally be waking at least some of us up.
Most people seem not to have a clue, want to see a clue, or the truth, about the climate change/crisis. They fall behind the wall of denial, divert and divide. Until or unless humanity comes together to stem and stall the trend toward self-destruction, the do nothing people will have nothing to do and nowhere to live. No one wants to hear that either. The evidence does not favor our survival as a species.
Lots of whining and gnashing of teeth. “ Need to learn to live like most nations in the undeveloped world”? There’s the rub, isn’t it. It’s all about power and control. And arrogance!! Human activity might influence climate, but there’s no way we can control it. I’m all in with clean energy, clean water, clean air. My support ends when we start talking about lowering people’s standards of living. The author feels guilty about living in a cool climate when 200 miles south of SF people are boiling?? Well they didn’t call it “Death Valley” for nothing. If you don’t like the heat, MOVE!!!!
In the 1960s we lived in Santa Ana California, south of Los Angeles, in a brand new tract house with no air conditioning. In the winter I could see Mt. Baldy from my front yard. Today that house would be air conditioned because it is just too warm in Southern California. For me there is no “grinding or gnashing of teeth”. Only tears.
The privileged developed nations of the world MUST make the biggest changes in our lifestyles (even basic things such as even using tumble dryers and then using chemical products to make clothes smell nice!) and need to learn to live like most people in the underdeveloped countries and the same time finance the people in underdeveloped to be compensated for the damage caused by the developed countries for the last two hundred years!
If this doesn’t happen the human race is DOOMED, the planet will survive and just maybe AI ROBOTS will take over!
Denial is an endemic human disease that is made worse by fear of the obvious extreme weather and the disinformation spread by the privileged that goes unchecked by the main media. Science and scientists are attacked when they present the facts. The entire process harms the good of all.
"Climate and democracy are the most significant threats we face because if we don’t fearlessly tackle them, we will cease to have the means to address all else that ails us."
Combine shareholder value, a Hatfield vs McCoy democracy, and a need to sustain an adversarial, quasi militaristic relationship with China, and you've got a pretty weak structure for taking on global warming in a materialistic, as opposed to rhetorical, way.
EVs provide a good case. China is a major producer of EVs, from super luxury models, down to small simple models that sell for as little as $5000. But opening the US market to these offerings is akin to trading with the enemy and undermining the US auto industry. Therefore, Mr Biden imposed a 100% import duty on Chinese EVs. There is little doubt that converting our auto/light truck/SUV fleet to EVs will make a substantial decrease in our greenhouse gas emissions. Just what we are after.But the EVs on the US market typically cost in well in excess of $40,000 (recent average price $55,000).
So the well to do can afford them, but not so much for the rest of us, and the climate,
,