While our president dismantles America’s environmental standards and tweets nonsense, other nations, our own state governments and a children’s lawsuit are – finally – trying to take action to save the planet from climate change.
On Wednesday, New York sued Exxon Mobil, accusing it of defrauding shareholders by downplaying the risks its own research found of climate change to its business. On the same day, ABC reported that for the first time, Australian company directors in a survey nominated climate change as the number one issue they want their federal government to address in the long term.
Oceans away, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau laid down a gauntlet on climate change, rolling out a plan for a carbon tax in provinces that had refused to implement their own. “Starting next year, it will no longer be free to pollute anywhere in Canada,” Trudeau said.
Meanwhile, in Eugene, Oregon, a landmark federal civil trial is set to begin this week against the Trump administration on behalf of children – 21 plaintiffs, ages 11 to 22, who are demanding that the government fight climate change. This is a case that could test whether our judicial branch has a major role to play in dealing with global warming, and whether there is an American constitutional right to a stable and safe climate. Naturally, the Trump administration has requested a hold on the proceedings to consider government filings that might derail the case.
But time is running out.
Florida’s panhandle and the coast of Georgia are still cataloging the damage of Category 4 Hurricane Michael – a storm that experts told The Atlantic Magazine is both a harbinger of a future climate and a representative of a class of recent disasters that exposes the vulnerabilities of our local, civic and national institutions.
Earlier this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders, issued a new and extremely grim report about immediate consequences of climate change – immediate as in 2040, just two decades from now. The report stresses urgency, and says avoiding the worst of the expected damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historic precedent.”
The report forecasts droughts, floods, rising seas, heat waves and famines. Coastlines and flood plains will change faster than cities’ abilities to adapt. Human movement will reshape boundaries and spark conflict.
Even now, the report notes, “poverty and disadvantage have increased with recent warming,” and those disadvantages will increase in a world of worsening food shortages, wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs.
This will be in our own time – not some far off, future generation’s time.
The IPCC report was the first commissioned by world leaders under the Paris agreement, the 2015 pact by nations to fight global warming. Yes, that’s the pact from which Trump withdrew the U.S.
The report’s authors write that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, the atmosphere over the next 22 years will warm up by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels.
Because nations have delayed making needed energy changes to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the 2.7 degree rise is all but inevitable, and we’ll likely cross the threshold between 2030 and 2052, according to the report.
The changes won’t be uniform. Some regions, such as the Arctic, will heat up two to three times faster. Some areas will see more rain and storms while other will see far less. There will be multiple impacts: crop failures, heat waves and swarms of disease-carrying insects.
To hold warming at just that dire a level, global greenhouse emissions would need to fall in half in just 12 years and to zero out by 2050. Virtually all of the coal plants and gasoline-burning vehicles on the planet would need to be quickly replaced with zero-carbon alternatives.
Not everyone thinks this is impossible – especially not for the America that became a world power in less than 250 years and sent people to the moon.
The National Resources Defense Council on Wednesday said we have much to do, but the U.S. “is light years ahead of 10-year government projections” for renewable energy, energy efficiency, and carbon pollution cuts.
“We must significantly accelerate America’s progress toward a clean energy future, perhaps to a velocity not previously recognized,” said Amanda Levin, lead author and NRDC policy analyst. “The good news is that we already have the tools and technology to get there. Who knows how much further and faster we can go?”
NRDC says our 2017 coal use was 40 percent less than the U.S. Department of Energy projected a decade ago, representing the lowest level since 1978, and oil imports were more than a quarter below forecasts. Total U.S. carbon pollution was 23 percent lower than projected for last year and also 15 percent lower than in 2007. Meanwhile, wind and solar costs fell while capacity rose by 600 percent. And thanks to energy efficiency, the United States consumed 3 percent less energy in 2017 to support an economy 16 percent larger than ten years earlier.
Americans, corporations, utilities and state legal systems see value in climate preparation and smart alternative energy, even if our federal government does not. Now we’re at a pivotal energy crossroad.
Do we push forward harder and faster – benefiting our health, wallets, economy, and climate? Or do we fold the tent and revert to the risky fossil fuels energy that will doom us?