California's Senator Boxer and about 40 others asked us to set our alarms for 5pm today as a literal wake up call to congress that we're overdue for bold action to reverse climate change while they spoke on the issue. In honor of that event, we watched Six Degrees Could Change The World produced by National Geographic.
I don't usually like watching such documentaries because, since I already know about so many of the effects we're experiencing and will experience, I find learning more to be simply depressing. However, it's also motivational. I learned that the Amazon river went partially dry in 2005, an event never before experienced in living memory. Further research showed that the trees killed in that event emitted more carbon than the annual emissions of Europe and Japan. In 2010, another drought killed more trees. This is in a forest that produces 1/5 of the world's oxygen and traps 2 billion tons of CO2 each year. At some point on the fossil fuel path we're walking, it's all going to die, taking one of the most diverse ecosystems with it.
As I said, it's motivational to watch these things. I was also struck that the documentary mentioned only energy efficiency, wind, and the distant prospect of fusion (at least 30 years away) as solutions, ignoring solar completely. Yet in the first quarter of last year, solar accounted for over 28% of new power generation capacity (not counting rooftop solar which is hard to track), closing the gap with wind at 51%, and renewables as a whole accounted for 82%. That's staggering and shows how fast things can change. Back in 2007 iPhone was completely new. 7 years later, iPhone and similar android phones are everywhere. Renewables can grow just as fast, and are starting to.
Six Degrees was also released in 2007, and it contains a forecast that we need to reach peak CO2 emissions by 2015 to hope to hold temperature rise below 2C degrees. The oil industry disinformation and politician buyout campaign has pretty much assured we'll miss that deadline. What does that mean?
Six Degrees makes a 2C world sound kinda sorta okay, maybe, with a lot more frequent "natural" disasters, droughts, coastal cities destroyed, and so on. This site makes 2C sound much worse. In fact, it points out that 2C is really 4C as it triggers feedback loops that push everything over 2C over a longer period. 1C also has feedback loops that push us to 2C, so 1C should be the target. Except we're already at 0.8C. That's the same figure quoted in Six Degrees 7 years earlier, so it isn't raising enormously fast, but it's raising. Scientists have usually been conservative, hedging their bets, trying not to sound alarmist, yet we keep finding these unexpected feedbacks like the Amazon dumping CO2 during a drought and so things keep getting worse faster than the mainstream scientific predictions.
So maybe it's already too late, or maybe we still have a little time. I don't think we can know. I don't think it's even a useful question. When things get bad enough, some rich country will pay some smart people to develop some massive project to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere to keep things tolerable for that rich country. Humans always find solutions when they have to save themselves. The problem is the poor countries. The billions of people that can't adapt and the neighboring countries that won't take them in. And the plants and animals. The Amazons that dwindle, the phytoplankton that die out in rising sea acidity and take most of the ocean ecosystem with it, and the land that's plowed over and farmed by people desperate to survive a little longer in deteriorating conditions. That's why we need action. Now.
And a lot of people are realizing that. I've been angsting about climate change for 15+ years, seeing almost nobody else caring, but lately, everything is changing. Year after year of drought is killing the livelihood of farmers whose parents and grandparents tell them they've never seen anything like this. Protests grow larger and bolder every year. 350's campaign to divest from fossil fuel investments is growing. If you've got retirement money in fossil fuel accounts, get out while you can because the fossil fuel model is going to collapse, hopefully sooner rather than later.
Al Gore and Paul Gilding are actually willing to say that victory is at hand for the climate movement, and his article is fascinating and heartening. "It is an extraordinary turn around when key mainstream economic institutions lay out the case for dismantling what is arguably the world's most powerful business sector. Of particular note in all this, observing both the message and the messengers, is that what was predominantly an ecological question is now primarily an economic one. This is a profoundly important shift, as economic risk is something society's elites take very seriously." Indeed, powerful companies, powerful individuals, and a huge grassroots movement are all lining up against the fossil fuel industry. And while fossil fuel may be the most profitable industry in the history of industry, it still can't stand up to a united resistance forever.
If you want more good news, read some of Giles other articles, like this one. But as he points out, we can't just sit back and let the market take care of the problem. "It is probably true that the market would sort this out by itself if we had 60 years for it to do so. But we don't. The science is clear that we have less than 20 - and this is where the opportunity for the climate movement emerges and why the choice of focus and strategy is now is so important. The task at hand is clear for policy makers, for business and investors as well as for the activist community. It's acceleration of existing momentum - to slow down fossil fuels and speed up clean energy. To make the 60 year process, a 20 year one."
So there you have it. Time to wake up. Time to push hard for change and save as much as we can. I recommend starting with a full read of those two articles linked above. Then sign this petition to renew the wind energy tax credit and sign up for action alerts with your favorite activist community such as 350.org. Their next big event will be in New York, Sept 20-21 when world leaders congregate to discuss climate action yet again. The more people we can get there, the more business leaders and congressmen speak out, the more likely it is we might see some actual action this time.
