Some members of the House of Representatives have established a “Climate Solutions Caucus” (CSC) with the aim, according to the founding document, to “serve as an organization to educate members on economically-viable options to reduce climate risk and protect our nation’s economy, security, infrastructure, agriculture, water supply and public safety,” As of February 10, the caucus had 24 members evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. One of the members is Mia Love (R-Utah).
On February 12, in the Salt Lake Tribune, Rep. Love published an op-ed concerning our deteriorating environment. She is certainly to be commended for recognizing the problem, as are the other members of the CSC, and I hope their work yields fruitful results.
Unfortunately,I am unable to share her optimism, stated in her op-ed, concerning our ability to enjoy both a clean environment and a “thriving” (which I take to mean growing) economy. I am afraid this is like having our cake and eating it too. The threat we face is not only the deleterious health effects of pollution, serious as those are, but the imminent “tipping point” of climate change which could render a complex technological society impossible.
I fear Rep. Love, in common with most politicians, and, unfortunately,with most of the public, seriously underestimates both the severity and the timing of the climate threat. That threat points to mass extinction, which could include humanity.
In 2007, paleontologist Peter Ward published a book, “Under a Green Sky,” detailing how he and scientists from other disciplines have learned from the rocks the dismaying history of Earth’s repeated mass extinctions. A good review of the book is found here: http://energyskeptic.com/2011/will-global-warming-drive-us-extinct/
Ward asserts that in the 490 million year history of life on Earth, there have been five major extinctions snuffing out 50 to 95% of all life,as well as four less lethal events. Although Ward helped establish that the extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by an asteroid collision, which for a time became the orthodox explanation for all mass extinctions, Ward’s later work established that none of the other extinctions was so caused.
Instead, Ward found that all the other extinctions shared a common characteristic: a rapid increase in the concentration of atmospheric CO2 accompanied by sudden global warming. This played havoc with the circulation of warm and cold ocean currents, in some cases shutting them down. The root cause was a narrowing of the oceanic temperature differential between the high latitudes and the tropics –a phenomenon proceeding rapidly today, as evidenced by the ever-diminishing sea ice.
It’s to be emphasized that Ward’s work is not based on mathematics or computer models, nor is it his alone – it has taken an inter-disciplinary effort to tease out the details.The result is the story told in the rocks. This is what happened, and the fact that we are now experiencing CO2 levels not seen for millions of years does not bode well. There is no doubt that most of the CO2 increase is caused by human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels.
The rub, of course, is that our society is utterly dependent on those same fossil fuels. Our most basic need, food, requires the use of fossil fuels – from the transportation of seed through to the provision of fertilizer, the production of farm machinery, and the fuel to run it, on to the processing and transportation of the final products and commodities.
Without going into excruciating detail, the provision of clothing and housing, not to mention cooking and home heating, is equally dependent on the use of fossil fuels. And, of course our transportation system, whether car, truck, train, or air, is utterly dependent on the combustion of fossil fuels. Without an unimaginable upheaval in our way of life, how do we seriously curtail our use of those fossil fuels? As actuary Gail Tverberg shows, solar and wind power are slender reeds on which to pin our hopes of dispensing with fossil fuels. https://ourfiniteworld.com/2017/01/30/the-wind-and-solar-will-save-us-delusion/
It is with that predicament that Rep. Love and her CSC colleagues must wrestle.I do not envy them their task. I fear we are in a peril much greater, though more insidious, than that faced by Great Britain after France fell to the Germans in 1940. After the victory of Hitler’s military, the great Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, could offer his people only “blood, toil, sweat and tears.” I strongly suspect that any realistic response to the present peril will require the CSC to offer the same.