If you need to see why paleo-climatologists are extremely concerned – OK, terrified — about what is happening right now in our climate, do watch this set of two animations. The first is CO2 concentrations from 1979 to the present. You will see that in a vanishingly tiny time period in geological terms, we have jacked up our CO2 concentration by nearly 19%, 335ppm in 1979 to 398ppm now. The second shows that progression in the context of the last 800,000 years.
ESRL Global Monitoring Division – Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network.
We are also in the middle of a massive die-off of countless species — at a scale not seen — well, not by humans, ever: 65 million years ago.
Here in MA, our politicians respond to fishermens’ desperation with regard to federally imposed catch limits, necessarily ignoring the fact that there just aren’t enough fish. They’ve been over-harvested, or moved away because of warming waters. This isn’t just business and economies and families. This is our food we’re talking about.
Meanwhile our US Senate voted 50-49 to deny that humans are causing climate change. And our new Governor’s appointees seem to have an extremely narrow and short-sighted view of the public good. We seem to really be talking about a new pipeline, when Boston is single-handedly leaking 15 billion cubic feet of methane per year.
If we ask what should we be doing about it, the answer is “everything”: Carbon tax. Plug the leaks. Massive efficiency improvements. Cape Wind. Farther offshore wind. Onshore wind. Zoning and permitting reform. Solar incentives. (HELLOOOO tilted playing field!) Electric car plug-ins at every gas station.
We need a total economic transformation. It is radical. But there is no future worth having, that has fossil fuels in it.
historian says
The future of Boston, along with many other towns and cities, is at risk, yet the media and many politicians continue to treat the threat posed by global warming as a boutique issue.
How many stories have we seen about the fact that the world has just experienced 358 months in a row of average global temperatures above the 20th century norm?
It is clear that we have to keep most fossil fuel reserves in the ground to avoid run-away damage and destabilization of our climate, but how many major political figures have ever stated this?
How many full time reporters cover climate change/global warming compared to the number who cover any major professional sports teams?
And why is it socially acceptable to vote for politicians who either deny that humans are causing global warming or who play dumb?
jconway says
Already the cafeteria Catholics on the American right are up in arms about the Pope’s environmental encyclical without having reading it (and failing to acknowledge that their heroes Benedict and John Paul II also acknowledged climate change was real, was man made, and a threat to all human life). But he will not mince words. This is because he comes from a developing country.
Cardinal Taglie of the Philippines made several remarks with the Pope at his side throughout his trip there that climate change was a moral issue and a pro-life issue. He knows first hand since his priests presided over thousands of funerals during the worst typhoons that country has ever seen.
It’s a social justice issue in line with making the church a church for the Poor.
On whether it is man made:
We will see how much the Pope slaps down the forces that value the almighty dollar and the free market over saving lives and preserving this planet for future generations.
There will not be a Catholic church or a Christianity if it’s adherents drown in floods, starve from droughts, or can no longer even safely handle the air that they breathe. It is long past time for action, and I hope the Pope’s forceful encyclical and diplomatic capital at the UN meeting really push this issue front and center.