"The facts are undeniable. This abdication of leadership is criminal. The world's biggest polluters are guilty of arson of our only home."
-UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres
In the time it takes you to read this article, the earth’s oceans will have absorbed the heat equivalent of 600 Hiroshima nuclear explosions. 693 million tons of CO2 will have been pumped into to the earth’s atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels, along with 6,500 tons of methane from oil and gas extraction and agriculture. The warming caused by accumulation of these gasses will have caused twenty-three million tons of ice to melt, raising sea levels by three millionths of an inch. 100 football fields worth of tropical forest will have been cut down. 2,700 babies will have been born into a world significant portions of which may become uninhabitable in their lifetimes and their children’s. And there will be ten minutes less time for us to do anything about it.
A dire new IPCC climate report released today concludes offers “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.”
And the question arises: What is to be done?
Specifically: What is our personal moral obligation, as individuals, to act to prevent this preventable crisis from occurring? And make no mistake — the climate catastrophe is coming. We know that as well as we know anything about the natural world. Climate change is complex but it is not theoretical. It’s terrifyingly real. Its impacts are already being clearly seen, felt, and suffered around the world: in wildfires, heat waves, droughts, crop failures, flooding, extreme weather, ocean acidification, coral bleaching, permafrost melting, spreading disease, species loss, and a hundred other ways.
We’ve known the essential facts about climate change for over a century. More recently, scientists have also established to a high degree of certainty both the amount of heating we can allow before we face unacceptable risks of planetary disaster(s), and how much time we have left to reduce our emissions if we want to avoid exceeding these levels. The answers are: not much, and not long.
So what is to be done?
Because even at this late date, scientists tell us that the looming climate catastrophe is still preventable – at least, the worst of it, and we know what must be done to prevent it. Multiple realistic pathways have been described that would, if implemented rapidly, globally, and consistently, keep the concentration of climate-warming gasses below critical levels. Beyond saving the planet, taking such action would bring a host of other benefits in terms of clean air and water, habitat preservation, technological innovation, and jobs and economic growth. Failure to act will doom billions to catastrophe.
And yet, we do not act.
And so the question again: what is to be done?
We have marched. We have contacted our representatives. We have changed our habits to make more climate-friendly choices. Have we therefore met our obligations? When the world burns, as the science says it very likely will absent transformative action, will we say to our children, “We did everything we could?” Or is there more? Do we not have an obligation to do, not just what is easily within our power, but to take extraordinary actions to meet this extraordinary crisis?
After all, we are not only utterly failing to act appropriately, but we face massive, absurd opposition to doing what must be done. A lie-spewing energy sector so blinded by profit that it will do anything — even re-freeze the melting tundra — to extract every last drop or fume to sell. A Republican party that has made denying reality a core tenet of its secular faith. A Supreme Court that appears poised to prevent our government from taking action to address the issue. A world whose leaders make hollow promises while acting to lock in climate’s worst effects.
So what is to be done?
When COVID hit, we shut down large sections of our economy to protect our elderly and vulnerable, as did much of the world. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the world united to defund it and cut it off from the global banking system. Yet faced with a global emergency unprecedented in scope, urgency, and gravity in human history — we act as if the meteor is not hurtling towards earth, as if the bus is not heading directly for the cliff, as if the family car is not idling in the closed garage.
In short, we do not act as rational beings would who understood their situation — much less as moral beings. We make climate our fourteenth priority for 2022 — beneath issues such as the economy, jobs, health care, and immigration which any sane person would understand must be secondary to the one crisis guaranteed to devastate our economy, destroy our jobs, overwhelm our health systems and create an immigration crisis beyond any government’s ability to address.
And I wonder: what is to be done?
I watched the Canadian truckeers close down Ottowa and thought: Surely civil disobedience at that level is warranted in this situation? Surely it’s justified for people watching their leaders impose a death sentence on millions, including quite possibly their own children or grandchildren? What is our plan for something like that? Shouldn’t we be planning a Climate Convoy for, say...this summer? Should we not be shutting down DC, putting ourselves on the line, to demand responsible action? Is extremism in defense of the planet no vice? Or would that just be tacticaly-unwise and turn voters off...and if so, what, instead, is to be done?
After all, solving the climate crisis would be challenging, but it would not require sacrifices on the level, even, of what we endured for COVID. Some combination of increased efficiency, acceleration of renewables, investment in new technologies such as carbon-capture, and planned, coordinated reductions in energy demand that would be painful but not catastrophic would likely suffice. Developing countries would need to be compensated for the fact that the developed countries are responsible for most of the carbon increase to date, but this could happen. And while all this would indeed be hugely challenging, it’s a positive, optimistic, can-do kind of challenge — the kind our country once embraced — and one that would result in enormous economic benefits and a cleaner, healthier planet — not just a planet safe from catastrophe.
Isn’t it blindingly obvious that we should be doing that? Doesn’t it seem odd that we would just let the world burn?
All we need to do...is what needs to be done.
Will we? Will you?
I don’t usually ask, but if you agree with this opinion I’d greatly appreciate it if you’d share. I also hope that the comments can be for sharing positive ideas and not just expressing defeatism and despair — even if we feel it may be warranted. And of course, if anyone actually wants to organize a Climate Convoy for this summer — I and my Prius will be there!