Buddy hates it when I glimpse climate reality and stop the family from eating meat.
The defeat of the CEPP in Congress coupled with the “blah, blah, blah” COP26 in Glasgow gives me a glimpse of hidden reality. It used to come every few months; now it’s every few days. Today is one of those reality days.
Most other days I’m counting all the good our family is doing - keeping the thermostat low, combining car trips to reduce gas, keeping our retirement savings out of the petroleum industry, and taking other save-the-planet actions.
Sometimes I take satisfaction from those energy-saving expos and contests and neighborhood meetings my wife and I organized over the past decade. And I’m proud of my book about how to climate-proof our families’ finances. Hey, we’ve been championing actions to save the planet!
Well no, not really.
There’s an unseen reality here: those efforts of ours - and millions of other families - probably had about the same effect on global warming as when we all changed to LED lightbulbs. Almost none.
As Alex Steffen writes in The Last Hurrah,
“Most of the ideas we discuss are decades past their sell-by date, and treat the crisis as a distant problem. Acting on behalf of our grandchildren. Gradual policy changes. Slowly rising carbon taxes. Eventual improvements in technology. Living ‘a little more sustainably.’ Planting trees. Planning to build some sea walls.”
Yes, our actions are hugely below the scale of the problem, willfully self-deceiving. The big delusion is that climate change will be stopped, that coming generations will adapt to a new normal - a world of solar-electric power, carbon-sequestration, fish-farming, public transportation, water-making, and a stabilized climate.
It’s magical thinking.
Stability is not on the horizon. Higher sea temperatures are fast changing our weather and will change our climate soon. Carbon emissions are growing again after the COVID drop. Tipping points - permafrost melt, glacier melt, loss of sea ice, rainforest destruction - can only accelerate emissions.
And, given the CO2 in our atmosphere and seas already, even net-zero emissions today wouldn’t affect actual warming for decades. As one Guardian reader in Florida wrote, these actions are
“petty, tokenistic, comically ill-matched to the scale of our predicament.”
But last week at COP26, world politicians were soothing us with slogans. I heard “Net Zero by pick-a-year,” “Green Growth,” “Climate action,” “Green lifestyle,” “Global sustainable development,” “Innovation,” “New opportunities,” “Clean technologies.”
And can you believe it, “American national climate strategy to be issued later this year.” Later this year???!!!
Government action?
The only way the world can slow emissions would be through big actions by big governments. Corporate inventiveness won’t do much; carbon sequestration faces limits. Promising developments like nuclear fusion, sun-blocking particles in space, and massive carbon sequestration are all too far in the future.
So if drastic actions by big governments could help - measures like carbon taxes and emissions regulations, land use laws and transportation restrictions, national investments in technology - we’re going to need a different government. Really different! Here’s what that government will need to do:
increase some taxes
curtail some freedoms
create new regulations
pick some winners and losers, and
expand government departments in the process.
How likely is that?
Does this list sound familiar? They’re exactly the actions that conservative voters are dead set against! Can you imagine the American electorate coming together to support even a small chunk of this?
Neither can I.
And even if climate scientists point out actions that could stop global warming if we come together to act quickly, political scientists can’t see us coming together.
If a little optimism strikes
Tomorrow probably won’t be another ‘reality’ day for me. Tomorrow I’ll indulge in some more magical thinking: Buddy and I doing our errands on foot, adding winter insulation to the windows, taking shorter showers, and eating less beef. I’ll be trying again to fool myself that I’m doing stuff that will slow global warming.
Perhaps I’ll again look for more powerful ways we can get our government to act, like supporting Biden’s Clean Electricity Performance Program (CEPP), $150 billions to bribe utilities to switch from coal and natural gas to wind, solar, hydropower and nuclear. That could swing a big stick at the causes of climate change.
Otherwise, I’ll concentrate on protective actions, shielding my family from its effects, rather than ineffective preventive actions. After all, protection is ClimateDog’s primary topic.
If you have pessimism - or optimism - about the fight against climate change, please let me have your thoughts in the Comments below.
LEARN, THINK, ACT
Americans support the CEPP overwhelmingly, but Congress has rejected the program, and Progressives are searching for ways to move some of its provisions into other legislation. We can join organized national protests on this issue, like actions by the Sunrise Movement or walk the halls of the National Capitol and other legislatures with Citizens Climate Lobby.
Whatever political action we take - protests, letters to the editor, letters to our politicians - lean toward influencing federal actions - and electing people to Congress who support strong climate action. Federal actions are the only lever we have that can actually reduce emissions; family actions, local initiatives, even changes at the state level are nice, but . . . have pitifully little effect.
There are suggestions online for the most effective donations to fight climate change. You might start with theatlantic.com/newsletters/weekly-planet, then look for others.
. I think you and the people you quote are right—actions today are long past their sell-by date. And yet, one has to feel optimistic in many respects because now the whole world is talking about climate change. The COP26 conference got lots of play here in Australia complaining that Prime Minister Scott Morrison is not committing Australia hard enough to be on the international stage with respect to climate change. He still has too many friends in the coal and oil industries that he is pandering to, and the people are upset. But the conversation is good, it has not ever before been so intense over the whole world, There has to be good there somewhere. OK, there is bickering over achieving net zero emissions by 2030 or 2050, but at least there is a range of dates to work to. That has never happened before at least to the intensity that we saw this year. I think the naysayers are going to have to shut up and get on the band wagon to help turn our earth around.
In another respect, I think the governments that want to push through climate control initiatives should be speaking more loudly about how investments to combat climate change can create huge numbers of jobs, improve the overall economy, increase tax revenues so that the infrastructure and investments can pay for themselves. There is still too much arguing over “X is going to cost more than we can afford to pay”. They are looking only at the down side of costs and not looking at the whole picture of how such costs (investments!) can improve so many other things.
Right now we are in a carbon economy that is going to disappear someday. There has to be a paradigm shift to a new carbon-neutral economy that is rooted in renewable energy resources. I think the effort is there. On the internet every day you see all sorts of new products that are designed to combat climate change, or at least not add to the current carbon footprint. I think the country and the world will get there. The momentum to move in the right direction is increasing. We may have already reached the point of it being self-sustaining—people are going to continue to innovate our way out of the coming climate crisis.
Thanks for ClimateDog--Great Name! I look forward to more blog posts from you and Buddy.