January 3rd, is Greta Thunberg’s seventeenth birthday. Happy Birthday Greta and thank you for everything that you do.
I am sorry for starting my 2020 posts this way, but we cannot wait. As Greta Thunberg so powerful put it at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last January, “Our house is on fire.” According to the latest science, “we are less than 12 years away from not being able to undo our mistakes,” and that was a year ago.
India and China burn coal. Brazil and Indonesia burn rainforests. Trump’s U.S. and Australia just burn. The Earth warms. Storms surge. Cities choke. Findings in a recently released United Nations Environment Program report are “bleak.”
In 2018, China, India, and the United States, three of world’s biggest polluters, increased their greenhouse gas emissions. Coal accounted for 59% of China’s total energy consumption and over 70% of its CO2 emissions. The world’s twenty richest countries are responsible for more than three-fourths of the problem. Meanwhile, Trump has pulled the United States out of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, whose carbon reduction targets have already been proven inadequate. Greenhouse gas emissions are increasing at an annual rate of 1.5%. They would have to be reduced by almost 8% a year between 20202 and 2030 to avoid disaster, which is a virtual impossibility as governments and corporations in the current competitive nationalist political climate as governments and companies plan to produce about 50% more fossil fuels by 2030.
Even if every country honored its current carbon reduction pledge, average global temperature will still reach 8⁰F higher than it was in the pre-industrial era. In response to the report, Alden Meyer, director of policy and strategy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, pleaded “We are sleepwalking toward a climate catastrophe and need to wake up and take urgent action.”
A big cause of additional pollution in the United States is the increased use of fuel-wasting SUVs and small trucks. Even countries like Canada and Norway, which pursue environmentally friendly policies at home, contribute to global warming by expanding fossil fuel extraction and sales in other countries.
The United States is not immune from the impact of climate change and coastal regions like the New York metropolitan area and Long Island are at extreme risk. According to a U.S. Global Change Research Program report, “In the absence of significant global mitigation action and regional adaptation efforts, rising temperatures, sea level rise, and changes in extreme events are expected to increasingly disrupt and damage critical infrastructure and property, labor productivity, and the vitality of our communities.” Weather related problems include intensified droughts, increased heavy downpours, and a reduced snowpack, “causing declines in surface water quality, with varying impacts across regions.” Changes in temperature and precipitation will also affect air quality and increase risks from wildfire and ozone pollution. Heat-related deaths are projected to increase, as will the frequency and severity of allergic illnesses, including asthma and hay fever. More people will be exposed to ticks that carry Lyme disease and mosquitoes that transmit viruses such as Zika, West Nile, and dengue. Older adults, children, people living in low-income communities, and people without health care will be disproportionately affected.
Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island experienced a warming trend of 3.3⁰F between 1895 and 2018 and temperatures will keep climbing. By mid-century “New York City and Long Island will experience 32 to 57 days over 90⁰F per year, compared to an average 18 such days per year during the 1971-2000 baseline period.”
Locally, higher greenhouse gas concentrations will lead to large increases in the “frequency, intensity, and duration of both extreme heat events and coastal flooding.” Much of New York City and coastal Long Island, especially the south shore, is now less than 10 feet above average sea level and is especially vulnerable to coastal flooding during major storms. Local sea levels have already risen about 13 inches since 1880 and are expected to rise between “3-8 inches by the 2020s, 9-21 inches by the 2050s, and 14-39 inches by the 2080s.”
Greta concluded her speech at Davos, “Adults keep saying: We owe it to the young people to give them hope.” But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.”
Unless humanity reverses course, the Earth will not die, but our civilizations will.
Follow Alan Singer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ReecesPieces8
Excerpts from the United Nations Environment Program 2019
Executive Summary
Total GHG (Greenhouse Gas) emissions, including from land-use change, reached a record high in 2018.
Fossil CO2 emissions from energy use and industry, which dominate total GHG emissions, grew 2.0 per cent in 2018, reaching a record.
Every year of postponed peaking means that deeper and faster cuts will be required. By 2030, emissions would need to be 55 per cent lower than in 2018 to put the world on the least-cost pathway to limiting global warming.
G20 members account for 78 per cent of global GHG emissions. Several individual G20 members including Canada, Indonesia, Mexico, the Republic of Korea, South Africa, and the United States are projected to miss their carbon reduction pledges.
Decarbonizing the global economy will require fundamental structural changes, which should be designed to bring multiple co-benefits for humanity and planetary support systems. The necessary transition of the global energy sector will require significant investments compared with a business-as-usual scenario. Any transition at this scale is likely to be extremely challenging and will meet a number of economic, political and technical barriers and challenges.