News from a Changing Planet -- #7
Happy New Year!
If you are still looking for New Year’s resolutions, please check out the column I wrote for the New York Times’s Climate: Fwd newsletter about one thing you can do for the planet this year.
(Tyler Varsell/NYT)
And it has to be this year. When midnight chimed on January 1, it marked the beginning of the 10 remaining years we have to cut greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to stay below 1.5ºC of warming above pre-industrial levels, according to the 2018 IPCC report. Actually, if we continue emitting at the current pace, we will use up our carbon budget in 8 years.
Sometimes, I resist this framing -- X number of years left -- because it’s kind of misleading. It doesn’t mean that we have until 2030 to do something, or that the world explodes in 2030 if we do nothing. It’s never too late to do something. And even if the world doesn’t explode in 2030, we know what happens if we do nothing: it gets worse.
None of that feels especially encouraging and inspiring to me personally. But if fear is motivating for you, then look no further than the Australian wildfires, which have burned already burned 12 million acres, killing 24 people and nearly half a billion animals, and temperatures are around 104ºF, even though their summer is only just starting. And while you’re at it, if you’re donating to the Australian Red Cross or other relief organizations, an equally or possibly more important thing to do would be to donate to or organize on behalf of political candidates or other groups who are committed to climate action.
(Matthew Abbott for the New York Times)
Meanwhile, 66 people have been killed in the floods in Indonesia, also an effect of climate change, though we have heard significantly less about them...maybe because they don’t have kangaroos ...So in our resolutions, let’s also remember that majority of people who are already affected by climate change -- poor black, brown and indigenous people all over the world, mainly in the global South -- and all fight together.
(Mast Irham/EPA, via Shutterstock)
So this is an important year and maybe that feels like too much pressure. It’s a lot of pressure! So let’s talk about climate change not as a problem or a crisis but as an opportunity -- an opportunity to create a lower-carbon and therefore cleaner, healthier, and more just world. But we have to stay focused on it, all the time, because if we don’t, someone else will.
(And if you doubt the depths to which those someone-elses will sink, please read this disturbing article about how utilities used local NAACP chapters to advocate on behalf of fossil fuels and against renewable energy. It is particularly sinister because the overwhelming evidence is that black and other non-white communities are disproportionately affected by both fossil fuel pollution and the effects of climate change, caused (of course) by greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels. (h/t Joe Schottenfeld!))
Which brings me to my main point: this year, let’s insist on action. Of course it’s important to talk about climate change, but let’s not pretend that counting the number of questions about climate change at the debates is actually the kind of action we need. (Every question is actually a climate question, but no one answers them that way.) Greta on the cover of Time is not a substitute for meaningful policy. Maybe you disagree, but I would rather have changes made to zoning policy -- as we learned last time, crucial for a low-carbon future-- or efficiency standards than hearing some Florida Republican say they think climate change is “real.” I mean, ideally we’d have both, but if I could only choose one, I’d pick policy. (Inspired by @drvox.)
It’s on all of us to pay closer attention to. Another transparent giveaway to industry: the Trump administration also announced last month that it would block efficiency requirements for light bulbs, a standard established by a law passed during the Bush administration. There is no reason to make light bulbs less efficient unless you want people to use more electricity which benefits -- surprise! -- utilities and fossil fuel companies. According to the NRDC, this move “could cost American consumers an extra $14 billion on annual energy bills.”
I know it seems like there are more important things going on in the world than light bulbs-- war? impeachment? -- but they’re part of the solution, and there’s nothing too small because we can’t afford to waste any time or electricity or emissions.
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Meanwhile:
In news from the world of coal ash: Just last week, the Southern Environmental Law Center announced that it had reached a settlement with Duke Energy and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality for the largest coal ash clean-up in American history. This comes after nearly a decade of fighting with Duke Energy to clean up the 14 coal ash ponds in the state that were leaking harmful pollutants into the groundwater.
(TVA)
Two steps forward, one step back: In November, the Trump administration announced new revisions to the federal coal ash rule which basically gives power plants free rein to pollute. (I wrote a column on the anniversary of the Kingston coal ash spill last month that explains this whole issue.)
And another edition coming soon about the Little Ice Age in Scotland! Get ready!
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Tatiana