 Happy Freaking
New Year
By Mike Roselle
It is 14
below zero outside
without counting the wind chill factor. After driving all the way from
California through blinding snow I was denied entry into Canada at the
Sweetgrass border crossing because the Customs officer said I was a
criminal,
and I am wondering if my clothes are warm enough to work on a global
warming
campaign. Christ, aren’t there oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico or even Ecuador
that we can go look at?
Well, no. Alberta
is ground
zero for climate change, and if relatively wealthy, educated people on
both
sides of the Canadian border think they can tear up the boreal forest,
cook up
all the fossilized gunk below ground, keep the smoke and dump the
sludge, send
the purified hydrocarbons and electrons to Los Angeles and Phoenix and
then say
they are concerned about climate change, they are crazy. Gruver and I
decided
to drive back into Great Falls
and have dinner at the Sip ‘n Dip bar.
Last
night I went to see Jon Tester, the new Democratic
Senator from Montana, who was in Missoula to address a crowd of Missoula
supporters. When asked about climate
change he responded that he believed it was the most important issue
facing us
today. There was wild applause from the crowd, many who had worked for
many months
on his surprise upset of Conrad Burns. When Burns was a Senator he
espoused that
global warming was not a problem that government should address,
stating once
that "[It] has been happening since the glaciers started to recede. You
remember the ice age?” Tester seemed to be saying to Burns, “Do you
remember
the dinosaurs?” This election has certainly emboldened the
environmental
activists in Missoula.
Long suffering, they now have a champion in Washington, and have sent Conrad
into
retirement.
Elections
are like hurricane
season. Not much good can come out of them, you are just glad when your
house
isn’t blown away. We are already well into the next election cycle, and
the
consultants are gazing into their crystal balls making predictions that
almost
certainly will be wrong. Again.
It’s hard to take
anyone who
is writing on the subject of politics serious because of the simple
fact that
most of the commentators failed to predict the thumping that the
Republicans
got in many parts of the country, especially here in Montana. No doubt,
like
condos being built on the beach, these experts are constructing new
assumptions
about the changed political landscape. The only good bet is that most
of these
constructs will not be standing in November 2008. It is impossible to
tell if
any of our current assumptions will survive the winds of change that
are now
sweeping this planet.
Last year Hurricane Katrina
settled once and for all the scientific debate on climate change. The
war in Iraq
has proven
the dangers of an energy strategy based on oil. It is slowly sinking in
that
the great extinction event long predicted by environmentalists is now
happening, with alpine species leading the way, soon to be followed by
many
more.
Somehow, against all odds,
humanity survived the 20th century, and we are heading into
the 21st
century with even bleaker prospects. It is worth remembering that many
conservationists back in the early 1970’s predicted that things would
be much
worse then they are now. The fact that things are not as bad as
predicted is
because of the work environmental activists have done throughout the
world. The
reason we still have whales, grizzly bears, large tracts of rainforest,
and
salmon in our rivers is due to the efforts of our global environmental
movement,
a movement that was quite small during the beginning of the last
century.
Because of climate change, a
new environmental movement is now developing that will dwarf anything
we have
ever seen. This probably seems an outlandish statement but consider the
number
of billionaires, movie stars and religious leaders and even politicians
that
are starting to sound like Earth Firsters. When a majority of people on
Earth
agree that there must be limits to growth the environmental movement
will have
succeeded in the first step towards addressing the problem. In the past
we
often had to operate in the minority and soft pedal the issues. Now the
need is
for the cold hard truth. If our movement doesn’t deliver this truth, we
will
become irrelevant. Our credibility has never been higher, but we risk
losing
that if we don’t take the bull by the horns and address the key causes
of out
current crisis. No more happy talk.
The fact is that fear is
starting to sink in. Real fear, and you can hear it in the voices of
people on
the street. The risk in all this newfound concern is that people will
be
desperately grasping at solutions that will be ineffective and putting
their
hope into technologies that will make things even worse. Nuclear power
is high
on this list, but so is the proposed new coal and tar sand technology.
The rush
into solar and wind is also fraught with dangers if we pursue their
development
with the mindset of unlimited growth. We have entered the Carbon Age
and from
now on less is better. This will especially mean Americans consuming
less
energy, rather than just switching to alternative sources, and to
ensure that
any advantages accrued from efficiency and conservation aren’t negated
by new
growth and development. The Carbon Age will be an age of limits.
The agreed upon threshold
for atmospheric
CO2 levels is six hundred and fifty parts per million, which, under a
“business
as usual” emissions scenario, will occur sometime around 2075. We are
now at
five hundred parts per billion, up from pre-industrial levels of 350
parts per
billion. At 650 ppb the oceans will no longer be able to support
organisms like
corals and pteropods, which would cause the collapse of the ocean’s
food chain
and could take hundreds of thousands of years to reverse. We know this
because
of Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or P.E.T.M.
The
P.E.T.M. took place
fifty-five million years ago, at the border marking the end of the
Paleocene
epoch and the beginning of the Eocene, when there was a sudden release
of
carbon into the atmosphere that caused a mass extinction event.
Scientists
reckon the total amount of carbon released was about two trillion tons,
or one-eighth
of what we have released so far. Unlike the subject of climate change,
scientists all agree on this one, and the models are simple and the
data
reliable. Continuing on our current course will bring us close to the
two-trillion
ton threshold that leads to the P.E.T.M. by about 2070. At this point
the
process of extinction goes into high gear and becomes irreversible,
unless you
consider a mass extinction event reversible. So these are the new hard
numbers
and get used to hearing them. They are simple, and round, and easily
checked,
they agree with every survey taken since scientists first reported on
the
condition in 2003.
There is a bright
side to
this, surprisingly. As environmentalists have argued for the last
thirty-five
years, the issues confronting us are much bigger than just our quality
of life.
We are facing a mass extinction event that may likely include our own
species.
Preventing this will take unprecedented global cooperation. A better
world is
not only possible; it is now absolutely necessary. Burning fossil fuels
at the
rate we are currently doing is suicidal. It is an addiction that we
must kick
cold turkey, not gradually. Failure to do so will mean more warming,
more
extinction, more wars, more dirty air and water and eventually our own
extinction. The burning of fossil fuels will lead to humans existing
only as
fossils. It’s written all down in the thin red clay of the P.E.T.M.
What this means for
environmentalists is that we have a greater responsibility than ever to
speak
the truth about our common predicament. In the recent past, it was not
popular
to be blunt about the Earth’s future. Even our largest environmental
organizations have soft-pedaled the problem, listening to the
consultants who
are convinced that only a feel-good message will attract new members
and
funders. This last year has demonstrated that this approach was doomed
from the
beginning. While driving hybrid cars and turning down your air
conditioner will
be necessary, so will legislation and international treaties, as well
as
economic incentives for alternatives, carbon taxes and a global
enforcement
mechanism that will ensure that every country meets strict emission
targets. We
should now put a stake in the heart of voluntary compliance. We don’t
do
voluntary compliance for our smoking laws, why would we do it for
carbon
dioxide?
Human rights will be
extended by the strengthening of environmental laws through
international institutions
like the United Nations. We have a Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, but
we lack a similar declaration of rights for the Earth. We need a way to
achieve
universal compliance with both. This will require an unprecedented
degree of
cooperation between all nations. What once would have been dismissed as
dreamy-eyed idealism will now be the major topic of discussion by world
leaders
for purposes of their own self-interest.
The bottom line is clear.
The two issues that will dominate the next century are carbon emissions
and
extinction rates. It won’t be about saving nature for whatever reasons.
It will
be a measure of our own chances of survival. As
much as I dread reading the news about new extinctions
and the glaciers
melting and sea-levels rising, I am feeling very good about the fact
that so
many people are starting to get it. We don’t have the choice of
avoiding a
catastrophe, we can only agree to meet it and overcome it somehow. The
next two
years are going to be pivotal. If politicians don’t start offering
solutions
that are reasonable, it will be time to march on Washington with torches and
pitchforks.
The bottom line is that
humanity owes a carbon debt of over two-trillion tons to the Earth.
Most of
that debt was accrued recently, and by a very small number of us. It’s
payback
time and the good citizens of the USA, who have enjoyed most
of the
benefits of the massive carbon spending spree, are going to have to
make due
with less. It‘s about time.
Mike Roselle writes for Lowbagger.org.
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