Sleepwalking Into Oblivion

 

The UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow has come and gone. The presidents, prime ministers, delegates and fossil fuels lobbyists have all departed along with any real hope of actually avoiding the worst consequences of global warming. The conference’s major accomplishments seem to be the usual pledges to reduce carbon emissions by mid-century or so (with little specific commitment actually fulfill those pledges) and a final statement that explicitly mentions fossil fuels for the first time ever.

It’s hard for me to disagree with the many climate activists and developing nations when they argue that the wealthy nations remain unwilling to address what is arguably the most serious threat to the planet’s health and welfare in human history. COP26 was billed as the last chance for meaningful action to keep global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Little in the reports I’ve read about the final agreement suggests meaningful action. Lots of promises, though but right now the world is on track to warm about 2.5 degrees C by 2100. Looks pretty clear to me that we’ve blown that last chance.

The result is not at all surprising. The world, led by wealthy nations that have growth fat and happy burning fossil fuels over the last two centuries, has been kicking this can down the road for decades. Researchers for oil giant Exxon identified the impact of releasing carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels in 1977. Exxon claims that the research was not definitive but the company spent a great deal of time and money denying that impact even after research in subsequent years further confirmed that impact. An Earth Summit held in Rio de Janerio in 1992 led to the creation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change calling for stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations "at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human induced) interference with the climate system." That framework became effective in 1994 after ratification by 197 countries. The Kyoto Protocol, asking both industrialized and developing nations to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions was signed in 1997 but due to co complex ratification process, entered into effect in 2005.  The 2016 Paris Climate Accord attempted to elicit specific reductions in carbon emissions but has largely failed to meet expectations.

So we’ve known about this problem for at least 30 years but have done little to address it. The fossil fuel interests and their allies have managed to create sufficient doubt and fear that wealthy nations have been and continue to be unwilling risk their economies by making the changes needed to mitigate the impact of greenhouse gas emissions. On the other side developing nations are reluctant to forgo the benefits cheap energy that served the industrialized nations so handsomely. These diverging interests and national myopia have brought us to the point where the world is on the brink of catastrophic climate change. We are already seeing that impact in the frequent and more massive wildfires, intensified hurricanes and extended heat waves but even in the face of that reality, the best we can do is recommend eliminating “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.”

I’d like to think the world can do better but the past 30 years offer little basis for optimism. The industrialized nations grew wealthy by exploiting energy their own energy resources and. when those proved insufficient, went abroad to exploit the resources of undeveloped nations, usually to the detriment of the local inhabitants. Those undeveloped nations are now experiencing the worst impacts of climate change caused by the industrial nations emissions and are seeking aid to deal with those impacts. The best COP26 could do was offer a “dialogue” rather than real assistance.

Future generations will not judge us kindly for wasting three decades of opportunity to find a solution to a problem of our own creation.

We Blew It!

The latest UN report on greenhouse gas emissions paints a dire picture for the future of life as we know it on Planet Earth.  The report estimates that even if the  most recent action plans submitted by 191 countries to curb greenhouse gas emissions are met, the planet is on track to warm by more than 2.7 degrees Celsius by the end of the century — far above what world leaders have said is the acceptable upper limit of global warming.  That change will not end life on Earth--life will adapt and evolve as it always has but the transition will be ugly.  In the past the kind of changes we can expect within the next century occurred over eons and did not involve highly complex societies designed on the basis of a stable.  Environment.  I won't mourn the demise of homo sapiens.  In general, I think it's a fair reward for our stewardship of our home planet but it's unfair to future generations born into a rapidly changing world for which they have no responsibility.  It's even more unfair to the many other species that will die with us.

As an aging Boomer I can't help but think that my generation blew it.  Oh sure, Boomers didn't create the current political/economic system--it was well under way when we were born--but we didn't live up to the predictions that we would be change agents.  Those predictions were overblown at the time but were still an integral part of our generational identity, either explicitly or in the conventional wisdom.  In reality, we largely accepted things as they were, occasional demonstrations and other resistance notwithstanding, and went on to live our relatively privileged (depending on sex, race, class and other determinants of societal worth) lives.  

What we did not do was take climate change seriously from the beginning.  Early warnings date back to at least 1912 but were not fully understood.  In 1965 The American Association for the Advancement of Science raised concerns about atmospheric carbon dioxide and climate change.  By 1988 the dangers were better understood and pointed to a changing world.  In that same year the first Baby Boomer was elected to national office.  The Boomer was Dan Quayle and the office was Vice-President and, while both are relatively insignificant on their own, the event represents our the Boomers' ascent to power.  We were already well-represented at other levels of government.  From 1993 through 2021 every President has been a Boomer.  You'd think that the generation that celebrated the first Earth Day in 1970 would have been sufficiently aware to recognize the dangers posed by those early warnings.

That's not to say we did nothing.  International conferences and panels and made recommendations and pledges were made but nothing fundamental changed.  America and the rest of the industrial world continued to burn fossil fuels and now we face a much shorter timeline for dealing with what is a rapidly deteriorating situation.  The promise of generational progress is that each generation leaves the world better off than it found it.  That was easy enough when we had an entire world to exploit (and the indigenous peoples of those exploited areas weren't part of the deal).  As I write now at the beginning of the 21st century's third decade, meeting that intergenerational is highly unlikely.  

Unlike my generation, future generations will address the consequences of climate change.  They have no choice.  We did and we blew it.

Going Rogue

Donald Trump called climate change a "Chinese hoax" and vowed to undue Obama Administration's efforts to rein in US greenhouse gas emissions.  He might have had an "interesting" meeting with Al Gore but Trump's choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency is clear indication that he will keep his promise.  Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt is a long-time foe of the EPA and a strong supporter of the fossil fuels industry who has challenged EPA regulations intended to promote US compliance with the Paris climate change agreement.  Pruit is by no means alone; Trump's short list for environmental and energy positions tilts heavily toward industry and climate change deniers.

So when Trump says that climate change is a Chinese hoax, I will take him at his word (Rule No. 1 for survival in an autocracy) and expect him to turn the US into a festival of fossil fuel folly.  I do not expect the US government to make any appreciable effort to contain US greenhouse gas emissions during a Trump Administration.  I think it likely that we will backslide.

Since the US is the second largest greenhouse gas emitter after China, our lack of progress in the next four or eight years will be a serious barrier to the world's efforts to halt climate change.  Given the threat climate change poses to the the world, I would not think it unreasonable for future generations to view the United States as a rogue nation whose policies threaten other nations.  Would they be able to invoke the right of self-defense against the US?

Beacon on the hill?  A model for other nations?  No so much anymore, I'm afraid.

Virginia Heroes

The Washington Post has a good article about the Virginia Tech professor who documented both the lead content of Flint, Michigan's water and the complete failure of public officials at all levels who discounted and covered up the problem.    Turns out Flint is not his first run-in with lead pipes and devious public officials. 

Marc Edwards...more than a decade earlier proved, along with an investigation by The Washington Post, that corrosion in the nation’s capital’s pipes had caused lead to seep into the water supply and pass through kitchen faucets and shower heads. After helping to expose that water crisis in 2004, he spent six years challenging the Centers for Disease Control to admit they weren’t being honest about the extent of the damage the lead had on children.  He burned through thousands of dollars of his own money, as well as $500,000 from a MacArthur Foundation genius grant he won in 2008, to take on the federal government. He was harassed, lampooned, and threatened. He lost friends.  Then, in 2010, he was vindicated when it was proven that the CDC had lied to the public in a misleading report, which falsely claimed lead levels in the water had not posed a health risk to D.C. residents.

Unlike state, local and federal officials, Dr. Edwards has earned the trust of Flint's citizens by his dogged pursuit of the truth behind one of the most grievous governmental failures in US history.

This event, and the actions of a dedicated public official reminds me of another public official who went out of his way to identify a similar environmental crime.  In 1975 Virginia state epidemiologist Robert Jackson documented Kepone poisoning of  workers at Life Sciences Products Company in Hopewell, Virginia after being alerted by a local doctor who had treated worker and suspected chemical poisoning.  Upon seeing the plant, which was housed in an old gas station, Jackson arranged to meet with workers and take blood samples which returned results high enough to trigger an immediate state shut-down of the plant.

Further investigation found that, in addition to poisoning workers, the plant had also poisoned the lower James River, leading to a ban on commercial fishing on the river that lasted until 1988.  In the end Allied Chemical, which had contracted with two employees to create Life Sciences to produce Kepone, was found to have also discharged Kepone to the river and was fined $13.2 million for violating federal pollution laws .  Life Sciences was also fined $4 million but was already defunct and never paid.  The two owners were fined $25,000 each.

The difference between Flint and Hopewell was that in the latter event, government worked to identify  and take immediate action.  Not so in Flint.  What did work in both cases was that one individual acted on results to force action.  Hopewell was more fortunate than Flint in that action was immediate but if it weren't for the tireless efforts of Dr. Edwards, the official stone wall of evasion in Flint would not have been breached.

What did not work in Virginia was public oversight of hazardous materials and their routine discharge into the state's waters.  Virginia's State Water Control Board (SWCB) largely ignored Allied Chemical's discharges until the Dr. Jackson blew the whistle on the company after egregiously poor handling of a toxic substance by Allied's supposedly independent subcontractor.  The SWCB in that era was less likely to challenge one of the state's largest industries.  I worked on a 1976 program evaluation of water resource management in Virginia that found " widespread noncompliance among major municipal and industrial [discharge] permit holders in Virginia." 

America may have come a long way in dealing with environmental hazards since the 1970's.  Still the system requires dedicated public officials to speak out forcefully. 

Kudos to Doctors Edward and Jackson.  American could use many more of you.

Misanthopic Musings

The most recent dead tree version of The Nation arrived the other day with a couple interesting observations.  An editorial about the Rio + 20 summit noted how difficult dealing with climate change is for a capitalist world where consumption and profit are a primary motivation.  I am a pessimist about the likelihood of any effective solution.  It has the upside that the human species might vanish from the planet or be sufficiently diminished so as to no longer be a threat.  The downside is that we will take most other species along with us.  For that reason alone, it is worth pursuing the mass actions needed to prevent the planet from becoming far less habitable.

It also reminds me yet again of the failure of My Generation.  We came of age during the time of the first Earth Day with dreams of saving the environment.  Forty years on, we are senior citizens who not only failed to live up to that dream but also bought wholly into the myth of capitalist accumulation.   We have lived well as the planet slowly succumbed to our excesses wrapped in the myth that we could deal with systemic environmental problems, just not now when it could be inconvenient.

Katha Pollitt discusses the fact that 46 percent of Americans are creationists, noting that almost half of the nation rejects the overwhelming evidence of evolution.

...[R]ejecting evolution...relies on a fundamentally paranoid worldview.  Think what the world would have to be like for evolution to be false.  Almost every, scientist on earth would have to be engaged in a fraud so complex and extensive it involved every field from archaeology, paleontology, geology and genetics to biology, chemistry and physics. 

We are a society of fools.  And while it is certainly just that we reap what we have sown, Mother Earth and the many species who also share this planet have done nothing to merit the fate that we have prepared for them.

Batting Order

Environmentalists have always had an agenda to put nature above man.

Donna Holt, leader of the Virginia Campaign for Liberty

As an environmentalist I don't have that agenda. I do recognize, unlike Ms. Holt, that man is not above nature. We are part and parcel of nature and subject to its forces. Hurricane Katrina, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami and a host of other natural disasters are plenty of evidence that Nature Bats Last.

Something To Be Thankful For

Last night I heard an interview with economist Richard Wolf on Between the Lines. He was speculating on the prospects that Occupy Wall Street may have for transforming the US economy, and quite possibly world-wide change as well. He sounded pretty upbeat, noting that in the many years he has observed social movements their focus was typically single issue. Occupy and its related movements question the entire premise of our economic model, they question capitalism itself, something he has not seen before.

That's good news since the Earth is a finite planet whose laws trump human conceits. If we continue to consume everything, then ultimately all we will have is waste, a diminished planet that supports limited life forms (maybe). All of which means that capitalism based on consumption is not sustainable.

Naomi Klein makes a similar argument in The Nation. She argues at length and convincingly that meeting the challenges of climate change with require revolutionary change in the way we think about economic and societal organization. Simply put, capitalism is not compatible with a living ecosystem.

So the ideas are out there and being discussed. They are more visible now than six months ago. And that discussion will continue. Another interview on Between the Lines was with two media organizers from Occupy Wall Street. They said that the movement was more than the encampment; they had offices and other spaces that are sill in use after their eviction. Here in Olympia, the same is true and the encampment received support from the many local progressive organizations.

The discussion will become more lively here in Washington on Monday as the Legislature meets in special session to carve another $1.7 billion from the state budget after receiving the latest grim revenue estimates. Occupy groups, community action programs, other Peoples' Advocates from around the state will converge at the Legislative Building for an extended occupation for the purpose of educating legislators on the reality of life in this capitalist economy. Events are planned each day. It's not necessarily a sleep-in but will certainly be a notable presence.

Of course, all this may come to naught, as so often in the past. But at least the ideas are in play, a necessary first step. I can be thankful for that.

Does Believing in Conservation Make Me a Conservative?

Third world garbage recyclers—the people who scavenge landfills for usable materials, testified against burning garbage to generate power at U.N. climate conference in Cancun. They rightly note that diverting the trash to incinerators will deprive them of their living and add tons of carbon into the atmosphere and argue for continuing this tradition and further supporting it as one solution to controlling greenhouse gasses. The waste-to-power scheme is the result of trading pollution credits under international law. Burning waste to generate power pollutes less than fossil fuel and earns credits that are used to offset emissions from coal plants that cannot meet standards. It’s a very orderly and rational market-based method for reducing overall emissions, don’t you see?

Unless, of course you rely on the garbage for your living or live downwind of either the waste incinerator or the coal plant. What has been created is a system that leaves populations still vulnerable to pollution, adds more carbon to the atmosphere, destroys a longstanding tradition of recycling and deprives some of the world’s poorest of their livelihoods. If this is the best solution to a critical environmental issue that we can come up with, we are doomed. Rightfully so, I will add.

We have a chance to forestall that doom—maybe—if we make wise choices now. One wise choice would be to designate the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge as a national monument, a decision that President Obama could make on his own authority. It would be an historic decision. An ANWR National Monument would protect a vast ecosystem, one of the last remaining on this continent, as part of America’s natural heritage. It would send a clear message that that the fossil fuel era is over, that our economy will look elsewhere for its energy. It would even give the Republicans some of the certainty they demand of public policy these days.

Not all Alaskans are enthused by the prospect.

That sounds nice, but it's a bad idea, said Wayne Stevens, president and CEO of the Alaska State Chamber of Commerce. He said there is a "huge disconnect" in this country between products people want and the resource development required to provide those products.

"We are shutting this country down," he said

[…]

Kara Moriarty, deputy director of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, which speaks for the industry, said it is appalling that there is a push to lock up an area so rich in oil when fossil fuels will be needed to meet the nation's energy needs for decades to come.

On top of that, Alaskans overwhelmingly want ANWR opened to drilling, she said.

"I think it is another stunt to stop development in an area that is not even in their own back yards," Moriarty said. "It is our back yard and I find it offensive as an Alaskan."

As an American I find it offensive that some Alaskans claim the sole right to direct policy over national lands and resources within their borders. It’s even more offensive when they are shills for vested interests. I remind these sovereign Alaskans that “their back yard”, like the rest of the state, was purchased by the United States Government. The subsequent development and political organization of that land notwithstanding, much of Alaska remains federal land and is the nation’s back yard, not just Alaska’s. ANWR belongs to us all.

There She Goes Again

Former half-term Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, is still full on "Drill, baby, drill" despite the disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. Offshore oil production is fine if it's "accountable". Even better is exploration and development of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Palin panders to the masses, promising comfort and contentment, requiring no change in lifestyle, asking no sacrifice that will contribute to a sustainable world. Her message is personal and national irresponsibility in a time of wrenching challenge.

In Palin-Tea Party world America is sacrosanct, endowed by God to forever be the Center of the World from which all ideas, authority and permissions will issue. In Palin-TP world drilling a mile below sea level for oil is just fine and dandy if you're accountable. No need to change or sacrifice anything.

Um, not really, Sarah. Offshore oil reserves don't amount to much in the long term for a nation with an economy based on continued consumption of large quantities of oil. The most optimistic estimates give us two years' supply. Much of America's wealth and prosperity grew from the seemingly limitless supply of resources. For a small population living on an immense continent resources were for all intents and purposes unlimited. That, along with a lot of ingenuity, made us strong.

Those resources are gone now. We used them up. That's why we are drilling a mile down in the ocean. Like a junkie, we are desperate for our next fix, so we will go anywhere and pay any price to keep the juice flowing. If we trash the earth in he process, that's the risk of progress. But that won't happen. It says so right there in the company's permit application. Besides, companies will be held accountable.

But accountability does nothing to ensure performance. Accountability, when it exists at all, assigns responsibility for harmful actions and penalizes those responsible. The oil has already washed on to beaches. Accountability, to the extent it ever happens, is after the fact. Supposedly, accountability will keep rational people from committing harmful acts but when the money is high, calculate risks and take chances. When they're wrong, accountability doesn't do squat to keep the oil out of the marine environment or the gas tanks from exploding.

Only two policies offer any real, long-term solution for America's (and for that matter, the world's) energy needs. The first is simple and direct: energy conservation. Conservation is the most readily available source of energy and can be implemented almost immediately. Ingenuity and innovation can further expand the savings. Serious conservation would demand greater fuel economy for motor vehicles and functional alternatives to individual vehicle transportation.

That's the second policy: getting serious about alternatives. In the short run, the prospect of finding different forms of personal mobility and livelihood is difficult and seems to be too much like losing something. In the long run, the idea of leaving a sustainable planet to future generation seems like something worth the effort.