CLIMATE CHANGE

Humanity at the Precipice

Humanity is standing on the edge of a precipice. We are in a time of collapse, a time of urgent crisis, and a time when the only way to survive is to reinvent who we are. This is the challenge that global warming presents to each and every one of us.  It is by several orders of magnitude the most important issue confronting the human community.  It is in fact the most important issue humanity has ever addressed, for it is the first issue to affect literally everyone everywhere, and it is the first issue the response to which will determine the fate of life on earth.  It is thus a crisis with enormous opportunities for renewal and transformation.

It is also a crisis that must be addressed now.  This is because the cumulative impact of human activities over the past several centuries, culminating in the last several decades, has been to cause global temperatures to rise, changing the very climate that has supported human civilization since its inception.  The consequences of this are as unknown as they are unpredictable, but they are all involve rising turbulence, destructive chaos, and mass migration and death for millions of people.  The more our scientists know, the more urgently they are appealing upon all of us to act before natural synergies spin out of control and beyond the capacity of human action to control events.

At a minimum, all of us need to understand the gravity of the situation we are in and consider deeply the enormous opportunities this implies for creating lifestyles, societies, and economies based on an alignment with the natural systems of the earth.

The Escalating Crisis of Climate Change

The Industrial Revolution was ignited and our modern economies galvanized by the burning of fossil fuels. Beginning in Britain in the mid seventeenth century, we have taken the residue of plants, compressed for millions of years and transformed into coal and oil, and burned them without reverence to fuel our factories, produce our goods, light our homes, and power our cars, such that the burning of fossil fuels have become the very basis of our modernity. 

The net result is that we have been spewing into the atmosphere extraordinary amounts of carbon dioxide. We currently do so at a rate of about 70 million tons each and every day. This has caused a dramatic increase in the in CO2 in the atmosphere, from 280 parts per million, which the planet has maintained for tens of millions of years, to the current 383 ppm. We will pass 400 ppm soon. Many scientists consider 350 ppm as the tipping point, beyond which major ecological changes are triggered.

Rising amounts of CO2 are causing the atmosphere to heat up and climate all over the world to change. One consequence of this, which almost everyone has experienced, is that since 1987 the number of extreme weather events has quadrupled. Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, cyclones, flooding, earthquakes, forest fires, and other natural disasters are increasing in both frequency and severity all over the world. These natural disasters are disrupting commerce, destroying people’s lives, and costing billions to clean up.

Droughts, for example, are devastating food supplies in Australia, China, India, much of Africa, Latin America and the United States. California just announced a state wide “state of emergency” due to the worst drought in its history.  Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina and Chile have all experienced agricultural emergencies due to drought. World food supplies are declining even as world food prices are rising.

Even the Amazon, normally the largest absorber of carbon dioxide on the planet, has been experiencing drought, and of such proportions that in 2005 rather than absorbing 2 billion tons of CO2, its normal absorption rate, it actually emitted over 3 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. To have the largest carbon absorber on the earth turn into a net producer of CO2 is nothing less than astonishing.  Our oceans, also carbon sinks, are also losing their capacity to absorb CO2 due to increased acidity due to warming temperatures.

The heating atmosphere is also causing the ice in both the Arctic and Antarctic to melt at unprecedented rates, and scientists are expecting that the summer melt of the Arctic ice cap will be total by 2012, something that only a few years ago they did not think would happen until 2100.  According to a study released by National Geographic, just the ice melt off from Greenland alone is enough to cover the entire state of Texas with four meters of water every 24 hours. If all the ice on Greenland melts, a distinct probability, scientists say that the seas will rise around three meters. Scientists are now reporting that the ice melt off in the Antarctic equals that of the ice melt of in Greenland, so the seas would probably rise a minimum of six meters. 

While there are no certainties as to when this would take place, it is prudent to imagine for a moment what this means: Amsterdam, Athens, Calcutta, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Mumbai, New York, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, Sidney, Singapore, and Tokyo will all be affected and all countries bordering any of our oceans will be dramatically transformed.  Just imagine the implications of countless millions of people, now living along the ocean, fleeing the coasts for the interior and discovering that the interior is scorched by drought and thus food supplies are scarce.

This possibility takes on ominous import when one realizes that what is also happening is that the vast tundras of Siberia, frozen for millions of years, are now also melting and the methane gas trapped right underneath the surface is now oozing up through the thawing earth and entering the atmosphere. The reason this is so troubling is because methane emits twenty times more global green house gases than the burning of fossil fuels, and millions of tons of methane are now being released into the atmosphere each and every day. Even the methane trapped in the ocean floor of the Arctic Ocean is being released due to the melting of the ice cap.  Global warming due to the release of methane gas now equals all human activity. While we might be able to radically reduce the billions tons of CO2 humans produce, the  billion of tons of methane being released is out of our control. It will continue to happen whatever we do, and it is increasing with each passing day.

It is for these and other reasons that when he accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Head of the IPCC, said "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment." Thousands of scientists around the world agree. Lester Brown states bluntly that we are facing the demise of human civilization itself if we do not take action now.

The “Tragic Inaction” of our Governments

So what are our governments doing?  Most talk about the urgency and then make “bold” commitments to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. Most governments talk about the urgency and then make “bold” commitments to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. These commitments make it appear like they are actually doing something and in some ways they are.  But their negotiations going into Copenhagen are so fainthearted that it is highly likely that there will not be any agreement at all by December. And in the meantime, CO2 emissions continue to increase and are projected in most 2050 scenarios to peak at 2030.  We put into the atmosphere more CO2 in 2008 than any previous year.

Even more troubling is that reality that even if the governments are successful reducing carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, this accomplishment would be essentially irrelevant to dealing with global warming in any meaningful way. A recent study by MIT states that if all the governments completely fulfill their current promises, which essentially are pointed toward reducing carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, we will have reached over 600 ppm of CO2 by then and global temperatures will have risen at least 4 degrees Celsius. 

This contradiction between what the governments are negotiating and what the science says is the most crucial fact in the climate change crisis today. According to the 2006 Stern report and numerous other models, a rise of 4 degrees Celsius would put hundreds of millions of people at risk of coastal flooding each year with sea level rises of up to 25 meters. There would be dramatic reductions in water availability in southern Africa and the Mediterranean and increased droughts around the world.  A 4C rise would lead to the loss of 85% of the Amazon rainforest, for example. Agricultural yields would radically decline and the world would face severe food shortages. Approximately 20%-50% of all animal and plant species would face extinction.
An increase of more than 5C is, according to the Stern report, "likely to lead to major disruption and large-scale movement of population." The report concludes that the effects would be "catastrophic" and "far outside human experience."

We do not have until 2050 to reduce our carbon emissions by 80%. We need to do this by 2020 and we only have until 2012 to make perhaps the most obvious decision in human history. Yet not a single government in the world is willing to recognize the obvious.  Dr. Pachauri recently stated that the governments are engaging in “tragic inaction.”  Never before has there been a such a dearth of imagination, courage and leadership.

In the face of a heating planet, in the midst of collapsing economic systems, in the face of an approaching catastrophe “far outside human experience,” we need more than rhetoric. We need a plan. We need a campaign that brings people together - that mobilizes action in ways that make common sense and offer all sectors of society a common good. We need a vision that provides a more viable basis for society’s relationship with the earth. The extremity of our crisis makes it paradoxically possible to create a new world.

“2050 by 2020”

We believe that the world must mobilize around what is scientifically urgent., not around what is politically expedient.

What our governments are negotiating for 2050 must be accomplished by 2020. 

We must somehow build a global coalition around reducing our carbon emissions by 80%, shifting the basis of our economies from fossil fuels to renewable energy and clean technologies, and reordering our lifestyles and life choices accordingly, all by 2020. 

Put simply: the world must unite in the spirit of John Kennedy’s challenge to put a man on the moon, committing ourselves to a ten year crusade to reduce our carbon emissions by 80% and completely shifting the basis of our economies to renewable energy by 2020. Nothing less than this will suffice to deliver us from the crisis we have engendered. This 2020 Vision is based on science, it is something all nations everywhere equally need to embrace, and it is the only solution to both the crisis of climate change and the renewal of our political economies.  All that is lacking is political will. All that is required is leadership.