[TheClimate.Vote] March 12, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Fri Mar 12 08:05:44 EST 2021
/*March 12, 2021*/
[predicted in theory - now measured]
*First-ever study of all Amazon greenhouse gases suggest the forest is
worsening climate change*
The first broad look at all of the gases that affect how the Amazon
works—not just CO2—reveals a system on the brink...
- -
The same richness that makes the Amazon so wonderfully biodiverse, home
to tens of thousands of insects per square mile, makes understanding it
extremely hard. Shimmering green leaves suck CO2 from the sky,
converting it through photosynthesis into carbohydrates that end up in
woody trunks and branches as trees grow. In trees and carbon-rich soils,
the Amazon stores the equivalent of four or five years worth of
human-made carbon emissions, up to 200 gigatons of carbon.
But the Amazon is also super wet, with floodwaters rising dozens of feet
a year across the forest floor. Microbes in those drenched soils make
methane, which is 28 to 86 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than
CO2. Trees act like smokestacks, channeling that methane to the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, moisture from the Atlantic Ocean that falls as rain gets
sucked up by plants, used for photosynthesis, and exhaled by leaves
through the same pores that take up CO2. Back in the atmosphere, it
falls as rain again.
Humans complicate these natural cycles not just through climate change
but through logging, reservoir-building, mining, and agriculture.
Deforestation in Brazil has exploded in recent years, hitting a 12-year
high in 2020, increasing nearly 10 percent from the year before...
- -
A recent analysis by Lovejoy and Carlos Nobre, a climate scientist with
the University of São Paulo's Institute for Advanced Studies, suggests
that rising deforestation might so alter the flow of that moisture that
it could push large stretches of the Amazon toward a permanent
transition to a drier woodland savanna. The duo believes that tipping
point could be reached if as little as 20 to 25 percent of the
rainforest is cleared.
That would spell big trouble for the climate, substantially reducing
even more the forests’ potential to scrub the skies of some of our
fossil-fuel emissions. By the Brazilian government’s own measure, forest
clearing already tops 17 percent...
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/amazon-rainforest-now-appears-to-be-contributing-to-climate-change
- -
[Frontiers in Forests and Global Change]
For. Glob. Change, 11 March 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2021.618401
*Carbon and Beyond: The Biogeochemistry of Climate in a Rapidly Changing
Amazon*
The Amazon Basin is at the center of an intensifying discourse about
deforestation, land-use, and global change. To date, climate
research in the Basin has overwhelmingly focused on the cycling and
storage of carbon (C) and its implications for global climate.
Missing, however, is a more comprehensive consideration of other
significant biophysical climate feedbacks [i.e., CH4, N2O, black
carbon, biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs), aerosols,
evapotranspiration, and albedo] and their dynamic responses to both
localized (fire, land-use change, infrastructure development, and
storms) and global (warming, drying, and some related to El Niño or
to warming in the tropical Atlantic) changes. Here, we synthesize
the current understanding of (1) sources and fluxes of all major
forcing agents, (2) the demonstrated or expected impact of global
and local changes on each agent, and (3) the nature, extent, and
drivers of anthropogenic change in the Basin. We highlight the large
uncertainty in flux magnitude and responses, and their corresponding
direct and indirect effects on the regional and global climate
system. Despite uncertainty in their responses to change, we
conclude that current warming from non-CO2 agents (especially CH4
and N2O) in the Amazon Basin largely offsets—and most likely
exceeds—the climate service provided by atmospheric CO2 uptake. We
also find that the majority of anthropogenic impacts act to increase
the radiative forcing potential of the Basin. Given the large
contribution of less-recognized agents (e.g., Amazonian trees alone
emit ~3.5% of all global CH4), a continuing focus on a single metric
(i.e., C uptake and storage) is incompatible with genuine efforts to
understand and manage the biogeochemistry of climate in a rapidly
changing Amazon Basin.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2021.618401/full
[new fires]
*Homes burn as several large fires break out in Kansas*
Bill Gabbert -- March 10, 2021
Strong winds and low humidities created difficult conditions for
firefighters
In anticipation of the fire threat caused by the extreme winds and low
humidity additional engines were brought in from South Dakota, Wyoming,
and Colorado. This mobilization was facilitated by provisions in the
Great Plains Interstate Fire Compact. Blackhawk helicopters operated by
the Kansas National Guard have also been assisting firefighters by
dropping water.
https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/03/10/homes-burn-as-several-large-fires-break-out-in-kansas/
[US Military]
*Pentagon announces climate working group*
BY ELLEN MITCHELL - 03/10/21
The Pentagon on Wednesday announced the creation of a working group to
respond to President Biden’s series of executive orders aimed at
addressing the climate crisis.
“Climate change presents a growing threat to U.S. national security
interests and defense objectives,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote
in a March 9 memo to senior Pentagon leadership and combatant command
leaders. “The changing climate is altering the global security and
operating environments, impacting our missions, plans and installations.”
The group, which will be chaired by Joe Bryan, the current special
assistant to the secretary for climate, will “co-coordinate department
responses to the executive order and subsequent climate and energy
related directives,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters...
- -
The DOD since 2010 has acknowledged that climate change could pose a
threat to where the military operates and its roles and missions – as
heavy downpours, drought, rising temperature and sea level as well as
repeated forest fires affect where the military trains and fights across
the globe.
But moves to shore up planning and acknowledgement of such issues were
hindered under former President Trump, who repeatedly indicated he
thought climate change was a "hoax," despite the scientific consensus.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/542632-pentagon-announces-climate-working-group?rl=1
[New flooding]
*Hawaii: flooding forces evacuations as officials warn 'this is climate
change'*
Scientists say residents should expect to see more intense rainstorms
more frequently as the planet warms
“This is really an example of climate change in the present day,”
Suzanne Case, the head of the department of land and natural resources,
said in a statement. “We have a flood emergency because of the heavy
rain bomb. And we’re seeing these more and more across the island chain
– more frequent and more extreme events.”
The warming climate is affecting rainfall patterns in the state. A 2010
report from the University of Hawaii’s Sea Grant College Program said
rainfall declined 15% over the prior 20 years. Yet the same report found
between 1958 and 2007, rain events with the heaviest downpours increased
12%, underscoring that more intense rainstorms are growing in number.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/11/hawaii-flooding-evacuations-climate-crisis
[future predictions]
*Global heating pushes tropical regions towards limits of human livability*
Rising heat and humidity threatening to plunge much of the world’s
population into potentially lethal conditions, study finds
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/mar/08/global-heating-tropical-regions-human-livability
[2 video lectures about one research paper]
Mar 11, 2021 - YouTube
*Underestimating Challenges for Avoiding a Ghastly Future: Part 1 of 2*
- https://youtu.be/TLxD4FMxk6Y
Paul Beckwith - Mar 11, 2021
*Underestimating Challenges for Avoiding a Ghastly Future: Part 2 of 2
*- https://youtu.be/zg8DZvFE8mQ
Paul Beckwith - Mar 11, 2021
Recently a peer reviewed scientific paper titled “Understanding the
Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future” was published in the journal
“Frontiers in Conservation. Science”.
It used to be extremely unusual for scientific papers to have such dire
titles, but not anymore.
I chat about some of the key findings in this paper. I review some of
the abundant evidence that future environmental conditions will be far
more dangerous than many people and organizations currently understand.
Political and economic systems and leadership do not seem prepared or
even capable of action at any scale large enough to even begin to
tackle the problem. We need all scientists to speak out candidly and
accurately to convey the enormous scope of our dire situation.
I chat about Biodiversity Loss, the Sixth Mass Extinction, Ecological
Overshoot (Population Size and Overconsumption), failed international
goals and future prospects, climate disruption, political impotence, and
how we collectively need to change the rules of the game...
Part 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLxD4FMxk6Y
Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg8DZvFE8mQ
- -
[here's the text -
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full ]
"frontiers in Conservation Science"
*Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future*
Conserv. Sci., 13 January 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419
Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Paul R. Ehrlich, Andrew Beattie, Gerardo Ceballos,
Eileen Crist, Joan Diamond, Rodolfo Dirzo, Anne H. Ehrlich, John Harte,
Mary Ellen Harte, Graham Pyke, Peter H. Raven, William J. Ripple,
Frédérik Saltré, Christine Turnbull, Mathis Wackernagel and Daniel T.
Blumstein
We report three major and confronting environmental issues that have
received little attention and require urgent action. First, we review
the evidence that future environmental conditions will be far more
dangerous than currently believed. The scale of the threats to the
biosphere and all its lifeforms—including humanity—is in fact so great
that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts. Second, we
ask what political or economic system, or leadership, is prepared to
handle the predicted disasters, or even capable of such action. Third,
this dire situation places an extraordinary responsibility on scientists
to speak out candidly and accurately when engaging with government,
business, and the public. We especially draw attention to the lack of
appreciation of the enormous challenges to creating a sustainable
future. The added stresses to human health, wealth, and well-being will
perversely diminish our political capacity to mitigate the erosion of
ecosystem services on which society depends. The science underlying
these issues is strong, but awareness is weak. Without fully
appreciating and broadcasting the scale of the problems and the enormity
of the solutions required, society will fail to achieve even modest
sustainability goals.
*Introduction*
Humanity is causing a rapid loss of biodiversity and, with it, Earth's
ability to support complex life. But the mainstream is having difficulty
grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the
fabric of human civilization (Ceballos et al., 2015; IPBES, 2019;
Convention on Biological Diversity, 2020; WWF, 2020). While suggested
solutions abound (Díaz et al., 2019), the current scale of their
implementation does not match the relentless progression of biodiversity
loss (Cumming et al., 2006) and other existential threats tied to the
continuous expansion of the human enterprise (Rees, 2020). Time delays
between ecological deterioration and socio-economic penalties, as with
climate disruption for example (IPCC, 2014), impede recognition of the
magnitude of the challenge and timely counteraction needed. In addition,
disciplinary specialization and insularity encourage unfamiliarity with
the complex adaptive systems (Levin, 1999) in which problems and their
potential solutions are embedded (Selby, 2006; Brand and Karvonen,
2007). Widespread ignorance of human behavior (Van Bavel et al., 2020)
and the incremental nature of socio-political processes that plan and
implement solutions further delay effective action (Shanley and López,
2009; King, 2016).
We summarize the state of the natural world in stark form here to help
clarify the gravity of the human predicament. We also outline likely
future trends in biodiversity decline (Díaz et al., 2019), climate
disruption (Ripple et al., 2020), and human consumption and population
growth to demonstrate the near certainty that these problems will worsen
over the coming decades, with negative impacts for centuries to come.
Finally, we discuss the ineffectiveness of current and planned actions
that are attempting to address the ominous erosion of Earth's
life-support system. Ours is not a call to surrender—we aim to provide
leaders with a realistic “cold shower” of the state of the planet that
is essential for planning to avoid a ghastly future...
[- - clipped - more with links at
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full ]
*Changing the Rules of the Game*
While it is neither our intention nor capacity in this short Perspective
to delve into the complexities and details of possible solutions to the
human predicament, there is no shortage of evidence-based literature
proposing ways to change human behavior for the benefit of all extant
life. The remaining questions are less about what to do, and more about
how, stimulating the genesis of many organizations devoted to these
pursuits (e.g., ipbes.org, goodanthropocenes.net, overshootday.org,
mahb.stanford.edu, populationmatters.org, clubofrome.org,
steadystate.org, to name a few). The gravity of the situation requires
fundamental changes to global capitalism, education, and equality, which
include /inter alia/ the abolition of perpetual economic growth,
properly pricing externalities, a rapid exit from fossil-fuel use,
strict regulation of markets and property acquisition, reigning in
corporate lobbying, and the empowerment of women. These choices will
necessarily entail difficult conversations about population growth and
the necessity of dwindling but more equitable standards of living.
*Conclusions*
We have summarized predictions of a ghastly future of mass extinction,
declining health, and climate-disruption upheavals (including looming
massive migrations) and resource conflicts this century. Yet, our goal
is not to present a fatalist perspective, because there are many
examples of successful interventions to prevent extinctions, restore
ecosystems, and encourage more sustainable economic activity at both
local and regional scales. Instead, we contend that only a realistic
appreciation of the colossal challenges facing the international
community might allow it to chart a less-ravaged future. While there
have been more recent calls for the scientific community in particular
to be more vocal about their warnings to humanity (Ripple et al., 2017;
Cavicchioli et al., 2019; Gardner and Wordley, 2019), these have been
insufficiently foreboding to match the scale of the crisis. Given the
existence of a human “optimism bias” that triggers some to underestimate
the severity of a crisis and ignore expert warnings, a good
communication strategy must ideally undercut this bias without inducing
disproportionate feelings of fear and despair (Pyke, 2017; Van Bavel et
al., 2020). It is therefore incumbent on experts in any discipline that
deals with the future of the biosphere and human well-being to eschew
reticence, avoid sugar-coating the overwhelming challenges ahead and
“tell it like it is.” Anything else is misleading at best, or negligent
and potentially lethal for the human enterprise at worst.
https://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu/sites/sw/files/Bradshaw2021.pdf
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full
[book discussion video]*
**The Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal*
Mar 9, 2021
theAnalysis-news
The transcript is available at https://theanalysis.news
UMass Amherst professor and PERI Co-Director Robert Pollin discusses his
latest book that he co-authored with Noam Chomsky, about the Global
Green New Deal and the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead in
addressing the climate crisis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHGtzcwhF5U
[California needs our help]
*One of the most polluted counties in America is getting 40,000 more oil
wells*
By Alexandria Herr on Mar 11, 2021
Kern County, in the south Central Valley of California, produces 80
percent of the state’s onshore oil and gas — and has some of the
country’s worst year-round air pollution. Now, the county is set to
increase the number of oil and gas wells from 78,000 to 121,000, after a
controversial ordinance was unanimously approved earlier this week by
the Kern County Board of Supervisors to fast-track the permitting of
43,000 new wells over the next 15 years.
Oil and gas drilling in the county already weighs heavily on the
residents of Kern. Some 71,000 people in Kern County — nearly 8 percent
of residents — live within roughly a half-mile of oil and gas wells, and
a third of the county’s wells are within the same distance of schools
and hospitals. As a result, drilling has taken a toll on public health
from the particulate matter in the air as well as from the toxic soup of
chemicals in the wells. Living near these sites is linked to a host of
health conditions: respiratory problems, migraines, nosebleeds, higher
rates of asthma attacks, cancer, and preterm birth.
More than 250 residents spoke out against the ordinance at a Board of
Supervisors meeting before the vote on Monday, with many citing the
effects of oil and gas drilling on their health. These burdens are not
evenly distributed: Of the 1.8 million Californians who live within a
mile of oil and gas development and live in heavily polluted areas, 92
percent are people of color. “It’s not going to be the rich, white
suburbs that are affected, it’s Black, Latinx, and low-income
communities that will be,” said Riddhi Patel, the communications
coordinator for the Center for Race, Poverty, and Environment, or CRPE,
at the hearing. “If you choose to approve this ordinance, there is blood
on your hands.”
The ordinance is an updated version of one that was passed in 2015,
which allowed oil and gas companies to bypass a lengthy review for each
proposed well by issuing a blanket environmental statement. Last year, a
California appellate court deemed that ordinance illegal for violating
the California Environmental Quality Act. Before it was struck down,
however, the county had approved more than 18,000 permits under the old
ordinance, most of them in census tracts that were predominantly
low-income and Hispanic — creating sacrifice zones in the service of oil
extraction.
Juan Flores, a Kern County organizer for CRPE, said he’s not surprised
that the Board of Supervisors approved the ordinance despite the
pushback at Monday’s hearing. In Flores’ view, the Board of Supervisors
is highly sympathetic to the oil industry. Now that the ordinance has
passed, he says it’s time for California Governor Gavin Newsom and state
agencies such as the California Geologic Energy Management Division, the
agency in charge of regulating the oil and gas industry, to take action.
He noted that Newsom has failed to follow through on campaign promises
to ban fracking and get tough on the oil industry. “So far with this
administration, we’ve seen a lot of rhetoric, a lot of words, a lot of
promises,” said Flores. “Yet we have not gotten to the actions.”
One way to mitigate the public health impacts of drilling in Kern
County, and statewide, would be to introduce setback regulations, a
mandatory minimum distance between oil and gas wells and residential
areas — a regulation that many oil-producing states already have in
place. Activists in California have been advocating for setbacks for
years, but haven’t yet succeeded at the state level. A bill that would
have introduced 2,500-foot setbacks in the state was voted down last
August by the California Senate Committee on Natural Resources and
Water, with three Democratic senators voting against the bill. A new
bill that would ban fracking and institute setbacks for new and renewed
oil and gas permits, SB 467, was introduced last month in the California
state Senate.
One obstacle to passing legislation like SB 467 is the sheer amount of
money invested by the oil industry into California politics. The oil
industry spent more than $10 million lobbying California politicians
last year against policies they opposed, including setback regulations.
Flores pointed to SB 467 as an opportunity for legislators to prove that
they’re serious about fighting environmental injustice and climate
change. But in the meantime, regarding California’s image as a green
state, Flores said, “The reality is that we’re way too far from it. Our
communities are still dying.”
https://grist.org/justice/one-of-the-most-polluted-counties-in-america-is-getting-40000-more-oil-wells/
[My favorite movie too]
*It is the question of the century: will tech solve the climate crisis -
or make it worse?*
Jonathan Watts
Robots on coral reefs, vast barriers to hold back the glaciers,
simulated volcanic eruptions to offset global heating ... Can technology
repair the mess we have made? Elizabeth Kolbert is not convinced
Sat 6 Mar 2021
Elizabeth Kolbert’s favourite movie is the end-of-the-world comedy Dr
Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. For
those who need a quick recap, this cold war film features a deranged US
air force general who orders a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union using
weapons developed by a mad Nazi scientist played by Peter Sellers. A
last-minute glitch almost forestalls an apocalyptic war, but a gung-ho
B-52 pilot has other ideas. He opens the bomb doors and mounts the
H-bomb as if it were a horse, waving his hat and whooping as he rides
the missile towards the world’s oblivion. No heroism could be more
misguided. No movie could end with a blunter message: how on Earth can
we humans trust ourselves with planet-altering technology?
The same absurdly serious question lies at the heart of Kolbert’s new
book, Under a White Sky. The Sixth Extinction, her previous book, won a
Pulitzer prize for its investigation into how mankind has devastated the
natural world. Now she has widened her gaze to whether we can remedy
this with ingenious technological fixes – or make things worse. “There
was definitely a question left hanging: now we have become such a
dominant force on planet Earth, and created so many problems through our
intervention, what happens next?”, she says.
In Under a White Sky she examines cutting-edge scientific advances: how
much hope can we place in gene-modification, geoengineering and assisted
evolution? To what extent can we repair the mess we have made? Thanks to
humans, the planet is heating dangerously fast, there is now more carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere than at any time in millions of years, the
extinction rate of other species is hundreds, maybe thousands, of times
above natural levels, and just about every planetary warning gauge is
heading further into the red. Are there mega-solutions out there for
these mega-problems?
One of the most advanced geoengineering plans under discussion is to
simulate a volcano eruption by filling the atmosphere with a million
tonnes of sulphur dioxide each year to reflect the heat of the sun back
into space. Scientists calculate this cooling effect would offset
human-caused global heating, but the benefits would be temporary and
unevenly distributed. To prevent the temperature from jumping back up,
repeated applications would be needed, potentially causing catastrophes
in some parts of the world to save others. Kolbert says this, at best,
might buy a little time, but at worst could make life impossible for
millions. Among the potential side effects are conflict, acid rain,
ozone layer depletion, lower power generation from solar panels and an
alteration of the spectrum of light so profound that the blue heavens
would fade and leave us all living under a white sky.
Kolbert’s deftly crafted book explores some of the biggest challenges of
our age – it also manages to be wickedly funny
The last time the world’s air was filled with so many particles was
after Mount Tambora blew in Indonesia in 1815. This led to a year of
endless winter in some parts of the world. In the US, one writer
observed: “The very face of nature seemed to be shrouded in a deathlike
gloom.”
Kolbert’s book is a meticulously researched and deftly crafted work of
journalism that explores some of the biggest challenges of our age. It
also manages to be wickedly funny. Some passages read like an absurdist
novel by Kurt Vonnegut or Joseph Heller. As in Cat’s Cradle or Catch-22,
humanity is trapped within an ever more vicious circle created by its
own skewed logic and techno-dependency. As the author writes early on,
this is “a book about people trying to solve problems created by people
trying to solve problems”.
“I hope the book is a bit of a dark comedy,” says Kolbert, who writes
for the New Yorker, over Google Chat from her home in Massachusetts. “I
am trying to turn something of that Strangelove sensibility on this
grave and depressing problem. I want to make people think but in a way
that is not unrelentingly grim. Whether to laugh or cry has always been
a fine line.”
So far, the Anthropocene is not going so well: humans, she notes, have
transformed half the ice-free land on Earth, dammed or diverted most of
the world’s major rivers and emitted about a hundred times more carbon
dioxide than volcanoes. In terms of biomass, people and our domesticated
animals now outweigh wild mammals by a ratio of 22 to 1. From nuclear
bomb test fallout to microplastics, signs of our presence are everywhere.
Under a White Sky reflects on “our habit of mind - that when we come up
against one of these problems we try to come up with the technology to
solve it. That is a profound thread in recent human history. How it
plays out is perhaps the crucial question in the coming century.”
Technology by itself is not intrinsically bad. Much of it, vaccine
technology for example, is brilliant and beneficial – at least to
humans. But invention often originates in short-term or siloed thinking.
And even more frequently, its application fails because of political and
economic decisions taken with little heed for non-humans and future
generations.
Even the great environmentalist Rachel Carson cannot escape the irony of
history. In one passage, she is admiringly quoted as observing: “The
‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the
Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that
nature exists for the convenience of man.” A few pages later, however,
we discover that Carson’s warnings about pesticides and herbicides were
used as an excuse for river managers in Arkansas to cut costs. Instead
of upgrading treatment plants, they imported Asian carp to eat
nitrogen-overloaded algae. This was supposed to be a “natural solution”.
Unfortunately, the carp escaped from the treatment ponds and devastated
the Mississippi river system.
Kolbert tracks the unfolding disaster as the carp problem grew bigger
and bigger and the proposed solutions became more and more outlandish –
physical barriers, electrification, poisoning, bubble-and-noise
deterrents, bounty fishing and an $18bn hydrological separation scheme
drawn up by the United States Engineering Corps. Military interventions
crop up again and again in the book, underscoring how the old idea of
conquering nature has never really gone away.
Instead of changing ourselves, we adapt the environment. “It was easier
to imagine changing the river… than changing the lives of the people
around it,” Kolbert writes.
Our pursuit of convenience is accelerating the destruction of the
natural world. Kolbert’s considers the 19th-century extirpation of
buffaloes, moose, cougar, beaver, wolverines, wild turkey and eastern
elks, which she attributes in part to the inventions of railways and
repeating rifles. Back then, extinctions were still considered shocking.
To commemorate the demise of the passenger pigeon, Aldo Leopold wrote:
“For one species to mourn the passing of another is a new thing under
the sun.” Now, however, it is so common as to be banal. Scientists
estimate that 150 species are lost every day due to land conversion,
road expansion, chemical use and global heating.
For many species, survival is no longer about being the fittest in the
wild; it’s about fitting in best with mankind. The creatures that abound
are livestock, domestic pets and semi-parasitic synanthropes such as
rats, crows and foxes that live off our waste. Most other populations
are plummeting, though humans have the power to put certain endangered
species on life support.
A jaw-dropping chapter explores the lengths the US goes to protect the
Devils Hole pupfish. This tiny creature lived in a single underground
pool in Nevada that was being sucked dry in the 1970s by nearby farm
irrigation. Numbers declined to just a few dozen, prompting a
bumper-sticker campaign, a congressional debate and a supreme court
conservation order. Since then, the entire Devils Hole pupfish
population – which weighs less than a single Filet-O-Fish – have been
transplanted to a simulacrum, built at a cost of $4.5m and monitored by
cameras and a team of four full-time staff. At one point, the ratio was
one fishkeeper for every 16 fish.
Over the past two centuries, we have decimated the collective value of
species and habitats, and then congratulated ourselves on saving a small
number of survivors in an artificial environment. Pupfish are among
thousands of similarly “conservation reliant” species that have to be
hand-reared, medically assisted, guarded in enclosures or guided in
migration. In another of those absurdist twists, “protecting” the wild
increasingly means encasing it.
Some of the scientists involved tell Kolbert they hope their research
will never be applied
“We get to hear about stories when a population is down to the last
survivors and only then is there a big push. It’s how the human mind
works. We don’t pay attention until a crisis point is reached, and by
then it is extremely difficult,” Kolbert says. She describes animals on
life support as “Stockholm species” – captives that become accustomed to
their prison. The same term might be used to describe humans, who also
come across as trapped in the pursuit of more domination, which requires
the development of ever more disruptive technology. It’s an escalator we
can’t get off. “We are deep into this,” Kolbert says. “There are no easy
answers. There is no way we can all go back to hunter-gatherer society.
That isn’t happening.” But surely there are alternatives. I tell Kolbert
I liked the book but wish it had delved into other options – politics,
economics, culture, education, nature-based solutions. Humans used these
levers to address problems before the advent of carbon-fuelled
capitalism in the late 18th century.
The United States, though, pays little heed to its pre-industrial
history. The country’s identity is deeply enmeshed with technology,
which is treated as the great enabler of progress and freedom. It has
also long been used as an excuse for climate inaction. In the late
1980s, the first President George Bush backed away from fossil fuel
controls partly on the grounds that the climate problem would likely be
solved by future inventions. That has become a mantra for Republicans
ever since. Under the Trump presidency, US climate diplomats focused on
largely unproven carbon capture technology in the future rather than
emissions cuts now.
Under a White Sky is one of three high-profile books recently published
on the climate crisis. Another is by Bill Gates, who proposes an
unapologetically US-technocapitalist approach in his book How to Prevent
a Climate Disaster. It reads like a cross between a planetary
instruction manual and a “Global Warming for Dummies” guide. The
Microsoft co-founder suggests what might be described as a global
systems upgrade to fix the bugs in the planet and reveals that he is
investing in most of the proposed technological solutions, including
direct air capture, meat substitutes and fertiliser alternatives. He
makes a very strong business case for change. But there is little
evidence Gates is willing to think outside the techno-economy he helped
to create. It could be argued he is simply being pragmatic. After all,
upgrades are easier than reinventing a system from scratch. They are
certainly more politically palatable to those in power. But what if the
system itself is the problem?
When I challenge Kolbert on her techno-fatalism, she agrees that she
looks on these technologies “with a jaundiced eye and a degree of
horror. But I do see it as the overriding pattern. I don’t see us moving
in another direction.” Though it “is definitely a step forward when
someone as eminent as Bill Gates is assessing what technologies we need.”
Her book concludes with the ultimate example of fiddling with the
planetary controls: the kind of geoengineering that might produce a
white sky. This section could almost be printed in red with a warning
sign, “Do not open, except in the event of a catastrophe - and even then
think twice.” Solar radiation management, ocean seeding and other
efforts to fix the world’s thermostat are no mere tweaks, no simple
re-wiring jobs. Some of the scientists involved tell Kolbert they hope
their research will never be applied. One says he is studying this topic
now simply to avoid ill-informed decision making later. She also quotes
a revealing exchange between two scientists at Harvard University.
“Geo-engineering is not something to do lightly. The reason we are
thinking about it is because the real world has dealt us a shitty hand,”
one advocate says. “We dealt it ourselves,” the other replies.
Plastic bottles and other garbage floats in the Potpecko lake near
Priboj, in southwest Serbia, January 2021.
Plastic bottles and other garbage floats in the Potpecko lake near
Priboj, in southwest Serbia, January 2021. Photograph: Darko Vojinović/AP
When I ask Kolbert if she thinks we will see manipulated white skies in
her lifetime, she says it depends first on the still uncertain speed of
climate change, and then on who is making the decisions. “If we are on
the luckier side and things happen more slowly or warming is on the
lower end of estimates, then maybe we will avoid that conversation. But
I don’t know if it will be a conversation. It could be small group of
powerful nations making decisions for everyone. So will we see a white
sky in my lifetime? I don’t think so. But in my kids’ lifetime? That is
not impossible.”
She is clearly uncomfortable about the direction of travel. The
technology can’t take us back to an undisturbed world. Instead, we are
are heading towards a future in which humanity will be constantly
reinventing our planet. Her book considers plans to use robots to manage
coral reefs and the building of concrete barriers to hold greenland
glaciers in place, but such efforts to buy time cannot last
indefinitely. As one pithy Danish interlocutor puts it: “Pissing in your
pants will only keep you warm for so long.” Soon humanity will need
another fix that will likely create another problem.
“We are as gods and we might as well get good at it,” Stewart Brand,
editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, wrote in its first edition in 1968.
This view was later dismissed by the eminent biologist EO Wilson, who
stated: “We are not as gods. We are neither intelligent or sentient
enough to be much of anything.” More recently, the British writer Paul
Kingsnorth took a different tack again. “We are as gods but we have
failed to get good at it ... We are Loki, killing the beautiful for fun.
We are Saturn devouring our children.”
I ask Kolbert which of these three views are closest to her own. “That
is the question at the heart of the book,” she responds. “Are we gods or
are we just bumbling, technologically advanced creatures? As Ed Wilson
also said: ‘We have paleolithic brains, we have medieval institutions
and space-age technologies.’ That is a really dangerous combination and
we are seeing that.”
Such philosophical considerations lift this book out of the ordinary. I
wish Kolbert had gone further still. We have forgotten or ignored that
our planet is already a technological marvel – the only life-support
system that we know of in the universe. Strengthening that natural
system is surely the goal our smartest brains should be focused on.
After all, it has been done before. Archeologists have discovered
evidence that much of the Amazon rainforest is anthropogenic – fruit
trees and medicinal plants cultivated by the indigenous communities who
have lived there for millennia. Such nondisruptive technology might also
be called wisdom.
The third of the three big new environment books, The New Climate War by
Michael Mann, goes furthest in this regard, with a strategic,
wide-ranging overview of humanity’s present predicament and an
exploration of possible pathways out of it. He champions overall system
change to decarbonise our civilisation. This involves ethics, politics,
finance, communication, psychology, behaviour and belief. Technology, in
the forms of wind, solar and other renewables is an important part of
the picture, but Mann – a veteran climate scientist – warns against
over-reliance on unproven fixes such as geoengineering, that distract
from simpler, cheaper, safer alternatives.
“Geoengineering appeals to free-market conservatives, as it plays to the
notion that market-driven technological innovation can solve any
problems without governmental intervention or regulation,” he writes. “A
price on carbon, or incentives for renewable energy? Too difficult and
risky. Engaging in a massive, uncontrolled experiment in a desperate
effort to somehow offset the effects of global warming? Perfect!”.
While Kolbert takes a journalistic position of wry detachment, Mann is a
sociopolitical activist. I ask Kolbert if she has ever considered
following the example of Bill McKibben, a former New York Times writer
who has become a leading climate campaigner. “Absolutely, I also thought
about it. What is most useful thing for me to be doing?” she says.
“McKibben has had an incredible impact. He is very good at it, very
inspiring. But I don’t think that is where my own strengths lie.”
I ask her how her optimism-pessimism dial has shifted since the election
of Joe Biden. “It has moved from: ‘We are doing the stupidest possible
things given the situation’, which is where my needle was for the past
four years. Now in the US at least, we have smart and committed people
thinking about these questions. We have an interior secretary that for
the first time in history is a native American. I think she will have
very different priorities from many of her predecessors. But how much
influence can one presidency have on the great forces of history?”
Has writing the book made Kolbert more or less enthusiastic about human
interference? “My adventures with some of these scientists who work on
really cutting-edge projects with gene editing, with carbon dioxide
removal, with geo-engineering, did force me to confront some of my own
deep seated and unexamined mental habits,” she answers.
“The question of how to feel about that - whether we are entering a
brave new world that is exciting or a brave new world that is
horrifying, I hope to leave that up to you.”
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert is
published by Bodley Head...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/06/it-is-the-question-of-the-century-will-tech-solve-the-climate-crisis-or-make-it-worse
[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - March 12, 2013 *
The Boston Phoenix's Wen Stephenson observes:
"On January 24, Congressman [Edward] Markey joined his colleague Henry
Waxman of California and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island —
three of the most vocal climate champions in the United States Congress
— in sending a letter to President Obama, informing him that they are
creating a special 'bicameral task force on climate change.' It's a
strongly worded letter. 'We believe, as you do,' they write, 'that
climate change is a profound threat to our nation, that our window for
preventing irreversible harm is rapidly closing, and that leaders have a
moral obligation to act.' They call upon Obama for 'decisive
presidential leadership.' This does not include, at least in their
letter, any mention of the Keystone XL pipeline. But it does include
'executive action' — such as using the EPA's authority under the Clean
Air Act to regulate existing power plants — to ensure that U.S.
emissions are reduced 'at least 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.'
"Yes, that's the same target Obama pledged at Copenhagen, and the same
as the 2009 Waxman-Markey bill. Never mind that the window is 'rapidly
closing.' With fossil-fuel funded deniers controlling the House, with
the U.S. Senate no longer bound to 51-vote majority rule, even the
strongest advocates for climate action in Congress make no pretense that
what's necessary — that what science demands — can be seriously
discussed in Washington.
"As I write this, President Obama's State of the Union address is still
days away. There's chatter about another 'strong' statement on climate.
But it's too much to expect that the president is finally ready to lead,
to level with the American people about what it would actually mean to
'respond to the threat of climate change,' as he said on January 21 — in
a speech invoking Lincoln and the abolition of slavery — and 'preserve
our planet, commanded to our care by God.'
"No, the only thing that matters now is whether there are enough of us
ready to lead him, and the rest of our country, in the direction that
science — and hope, and patriotism, and love — tell us we must go."
http://web.archive.org/web/20130509041103/http://thephoenix.com/boston/news/151670-new-abolitionists-global-warming-is-the-great/
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