We now have the remarkable convenience of the internal combustion engine, and also its noise and chaos and emissions to energize climate change. Burning fossil fuels has put us on planet Titanic ...
The doomsday clock remains at a critical two minutes to midnight, the 'new abnormal,' spelling future disaster, and we will continue to be like the "Titanic, ignoring the iceberg ahead, enjoying the fine food and music," to quote former California governor Jerry Brown. He is now the executive chairman of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the organization behind the clock. This year climate change is cited as a major cause; it was the principal reason in 2012 and 2014.
The U.S. 'National Climate Assessment' last November did not mince words when it noted, "The evidence of human-caused climate change is overwhelming ... the impacts of climate change are intensifying across the country." The report mandated by Congress and affirmed by science agencies of the government was repudiated by President Trump: "I do not believe it," was his blunt response. Mr. Trump religiously opposes climate change, believing it to be a natural phenomenon that will reverse itself also naturally. About the current administration, one prominent scientist, the president of the Woods Hole Research Center, was quoted in Science as saying, "They're in la-la-land." Science has labeled the inaction, the policy breakdown of the year.
Sadly
this la-la-land is not harmless
as tell-tale
signs of the exacerbation of weather events are already here: Hurricanes
intensify quickly, then move slowly shedding unprecedented amounts of rain. It happened with Harvey over Houston in 2017, and with Florence
over North Carolina in 2018. That overall temperature in the oceans is breaking new records is one good reason.
The 1.5C report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has given us, on the safe side, a 12-year window in which to start reducing emissions, to try to achieve neutral balance by mid-century, or eventually a self-reinforcing feedback loop will lead to uncontrollable warming and a "Hothouse Earth." If we cannot expect any policy initiatives from this administration, can changes in individual behaviors help? Apparently yes, and it is within our power to address two major CO2 sources:
Carbon
capture from the atmosphere is difficult and expensive. A better
alternative might be to remove it at the source. That means at power
stations and factories, and there are new processes
offering hope. However, most carbon emission comes from
transportation, and it points to a future of electric cars using
electricity from CO2 scrubbed power stations. The choice of car is
clearly up to us.
Another avenue of individual involvement is dietary change for a sustainable future -- in itself clearly at odds with the zealous consumption of meat in rich countries. Ruminants release methane through belching as food passes through their several stomachs. Over their agricultural cycle, cattle alone emit 270,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas per tonne of protein, many times more than poultry. As Bill Gates has observed if cows were a country, they would rank third in greenhouse gas emissions.
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