Climate, COP II*

   A few surprises have emerged as one begins thinking about climate change.  For one, there's India.  Many including myself think of China as the rising force in adding to climate change; but in truth China has recognized its problem (primarily with coal and its resulting pollution) and is close to leading the world in both reducing their dependence on coal fired plants (and increasing nuclear power production facilities) and converting to solar.  Not so much with India.  In a piece in Wired, author Charles C. Mann wrote: For two decades, Americans have been barraged with news about the ascent of Beijing—its economic power, its enormous size, its rising voice in world affairs.  Much less attention has been paid to New Delhi.  This will change.  Already Earth’s fastest-growing major economy and its biggest weapons importer, India is on track to become the world’s most populous nation (probably by 2022), to have its biggest economy (possibly by 2048), and potentially to build its biggest military force (perhaps by 2040).  What China was in the American imagination in the 1990s and 2000s, India will be in the next two decades—a cavalcade of superlatives, a focus of fears...China has pledged that its carbon dioxide output would fall after 2030, while the US has vowed to cut its output by more than a quarter in about the same time frame.  Indeed, China’s emissions have fallen so fast in the past year that many believe it may achieve its target ahead of time—the biggest stride yet in the fight against climate change...India’s carbon output, by contrast, is growing faster than any other country’s.  Should that trend continue—and there is reason to think that it will—India could surpass China in 25 years to become the world’s greatest emitter.  Conceivably, its increasing emissions could offset all the efforts at curtailment in the rest of the world, leading to catastrophe.   Add to all of this the rising probability of changing agriculture harvests as drought and weather patterns emerge (122 million going hungry by 2030 cried The Guardian as it reported on the recent report from the UN)...even National Geographic has an IMAX movie on our changing and Extreme Weather.

   But wait, there might be something better to watch...Al Gore.  What??  As a former vice-president of the U.S., he was among the first people to alert the world that we might be heading for climate and world disaster unless we change our ways and soon.  His book and film, An Inconvenient Truth, went on to become a best seller (and the film won 2 Academy Awards), and he continued with videos and the founding of The Climate Reality Project.  So why would he suddenly become optimistic about where we are headed with climate change?  One reason might be found in Germany.  Rejecting nuclear and diving into solar and wind, Germany has promised to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels by 40%.  Try to put that in perspective in your own home, from driving in your car to powering your computer...40% less on-demand power as it is now.  But surprisingly, the country is nearly there.  In a piece in National Geographic by writer Robert Kunzig, he wrote: Germany is pioneering an epochal transformation it calls the energiewende—an energy revolution that scientists say all nations must one day complete if a climate disaster is to be averted.  Among large industrial nations, Germany is a leader.  Last year about 27 percent of its electricity came from renewable sources such as wind and solar power, three times what it got a decade ago and more than twice what the United States gets today.  The change accelerated after the 2011 meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant, which led Chancellor Angela Merkel to declare that Germany would shut all 17 of its own reactors by 2022.  Nine have been switched off so far, and renewables have more than picked up the slack...Germany has Europe’s second highest consumer electricity prices, yet public support for its energiewende—an aggressive transition to renewable energy—is at an impressive 92 percent.  The support is rooted in an eco-friendly culture, a collective desire to abandon nuclear energy, and laws that allow citizens to profit from selling their energy to the grid.  Roughly 27 percent of Germany’s electricity is from renewables; the goal is at least 80 percent by 2050.

    But as with many things, this comes with a cost and a commitment.  In the case of Germany, the citizens converting to solar can sell back their "excess energy" to the utility companies who in turn pays for this by upping the tax to everyone by about $18 monthly says the article (published in 2015).  Now that so much of Germany has converted off of fossil fuels, the utility companies are getting more and more into the game and reducing the amounts they pay to buy back the excess energy.  Wind turbines are appearing 50 miles off shore in the ocean and small citizen groups are being shoved more and more into a corner.  Is this a good thing?  If the tax becomes too high and the rebates too low will the people return to a cheaper and more affordable energy source?  This is the case in India...and possibly everywhere throughout the world.  If oil and coal become so cheap --and if many in your population cannot afford the higher renewable energy tax to support such a shift-- will this change the scenario?  Germany stood up to this and said no several decades ago (although the article makes it seem as if the economic climate may be wavering a bit on this issue).  But realistically, when you're dealing with hunger and drought and cold and heat, can it happen?  Will those who can afford to subsidize the change do so (say, by paying a small tax to support those who cannot pay at all) and more importantly express the will to change their investments and shift their monies away from the large oil and coal and nuclear industries into new developments...can it happen en masse?  Surprise...it might already be happening.  Fukushima has been a public relations nightmare for nuclear power, and coal is facing a similar fate (in the U.S. many coal mines have been shuttered although the Supreme Court has put some of the shutdowns on hold).

   This changing public mood was better expressed by Al Gore in a rather uplifting presentation he does on Ted Talks.  Says Gore in the video: I'm optimistic, because I believe we have the capacity, at moments of great challenge, to set aside the causes of distraction and rise to the challenge that history is presenting to us.  Sometimes I hear people respond to the disturbing facts of the climate crisis by saying, "Oh, this is so terrible.  What a burden we have."  I would like to ask you to reframe that.  How many generations in all of human history have had the opportunity to rise to a challenge that is worthy of our best efforts?  A challenge that can pull from us more than we knew we could do?  I think we ought to approach this challenge with a sense of profound joy and gratitude that we are the generation about which, a thousand years from now, philharmonic orchestras and poets and singers will celebrate by saying, they were the ones that found it within themselves to solve this crisis and lay the basis for a bright and optimistic human future.  

   Well said and even better presented.  If you want a quick summary of what's happening with our climate, watch the presentation.  There's hope...and bit by bit, light bulb by light bulb, errand by errand, decision by decision, you are making it happen.  Now, more than ever, it's important to not give up.


*COP 22, the climate meeting of nations takes place November 7-15, 2016 in Morocco...on a different note an interesting take on the subject is the new book by author David Biello titled The Unnatural World.  In a review by Kirkus Review, it was written: As the author notes, we must mature as a species, ditch short-term thinking, and recognize that we are now influencing outcomes in ways we can't foresee.  It is our fate—not just the planet's—that hangs in the balance...The author, who hosts the ongoing PBS documentary Beyond the Light Switch, believes we are writing a new chapter in the history of the Earth, much of it composed in ignorance.  We are terraforming our own world without conscious design, exerting global influence without the exercise of global responsibility...Biello advocates a fundamentally new perspective on where we live and how, assuring that we have the tools to address almost any challenge, if not yet the will.