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Climate is Priority One
The survival of humankind needs to be our top priority. We need to be wary of people selling greenwashed policies and products, but at the same time, we should be aggressively seeking out legitimate solutions.
Soon the principal business of mankind will be fighting climate. The earlier we start in, the less onerous that task will be.
While it's useful to take personal steps, it's critical to understand that we cannot solve this problem by force of individual will. We will need coordinated societal changes of fairly major proportion that cannot be done without help of government.
No Halfway Measures
A Progressive, a Conservative, and Centrist stand at the edge of a vast desert, but find that a broad chasm blocks their way to the green paradise they see beyond.
Progressive: There's no surviving in this desert. Let's build a bridge across the chasm to where it's green.
Conservative: That will cost too much. Let's stay here and sell bottled water until we die of thirst.
Centrist: Maybe we could jump across. That's cheap, and I'm sure we'd get at least halfway for now.
—Gray Matters: "Halfway Measures"
by Kent Pitman, May 2019
Prioritizing the Progressive Agenda
Although I predisposed to like and support most progressive goals, I think the survival of civilization is critical enough that I'm willing to put other goals on the back burner in order to achive Climate. There is a timetable here, dictated by physics. It serves us not at all to have civil rights, but no future. By contrast, if we have a societal future but lose ground on other things in the process, there will at least be time to work back to proper rights.
As it happens, I think most elements of a progressive agenda are, coincidentally, not harmful to a climate agenda, and many are quite synergistic, so hopefully not too many difficlut choices will have to be made.
How I Got Here
In 2008, various things alerted to me that it was time I'd better seriously track Climate Change.
One of the first things was an essay by my college friend Steve Kirsch, titled How It Will End. It alleged a 5% chance that mankind could actually go extinct by the year 2100.
Around the same time, I also saw Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. As I watched, the movie gave me extreme anxiety. I got so ill I had to excuse myself to stand in the hallway to catch my breath.
I was late to the game, but properly alarmed. But I got beyond any sense of denial.
After thinking about it more, not only did I think Steve was on the right track, but I worried he was lowballing the issue. I wrote an article, Climate Change Coming “Faster Than Expected”, that detailed my concerns about the speed at which this matter could escalate, and why it might be faster even than the scientists say.
It's not that I don't believe the science, but there are synergies and things people overlook that can mean it's worse even than things that people have measured. I did a thought experiment about what danger signs I'd expect to see if such escalation did occur, if Climate Change were accelerating. Alas, many of my guesses played out as I'd worried they might.
And so I've been talking about Climate ever since, in a variety of ways, as much as I felt people around me could bear. People are finally noticing now. I do worry it may be too late. But one must always act as if there's hope, just in case there is.
Warren/Inslee
We desperately need an aggressive plan to address Climate Change. The “halfway measures” Biden is proposing will be insufficient. We need a progressive nominee from the Democrats. I'm hoping for a Warren/Inslee ticket.
Elizabeth Warren has the leadership and the ability to explain the need to do hard things. Jay Inslee had a solid climate plan that I liked better than Warren's original plan, but she seems now to have adopted his, which I think was a good move. As VP, Inslee could be left free to focus full-time on climate.
I take note of the fact that Bernie now has a very comprehensive Green New Deal plan as well. Warren should study and adopt parts of that, too. This needs to be a collaboration, not a fight. Let's select a candidate on the basis of their other skills, but encourage them to share as many ideas as possible.
See my article No Halfway Measures on Climate for additional thoughts.
My Climate Blogging
- Losing Ground in the Environment (Sep 22, 2019)
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Electrical “ground” as metaphor for environmental resources...
“Stuff we never previously had to account for, because we had a belief that the world was so infinitely large that it would supply us with as much as we needed of whatever we wanted. And we deceived ourselves into believing it would gracefully accept in return as much crap, both literally and figuratively, as we wanted to throw back at it in return. ”
- Degrees of Climate Catastrophe (Sep 21, 2019)
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The scale we use to describe climate severity...
“What's the most civilization-destroying error in climate communication? I guess this is something that people might disagree on, but to me it has a very definitive answer: It's talking about climate change severity in terms of degrees Celsius (°C).”
- Democratizing Climate Discussion (May 14, 2019)
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Observations on cultural changes required...
“The language of regular people is coarse, poetic, abbreviated, blurry, emotional, imprecise, and most important unchecked. ... In order for public dialog to proceed, scientists need to prepare themselves for sloppy conversations, conversations that frankly will not make them happy at the detail level.”
- No Halfway Measures on Climate (May 11, 2019)
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Drawing clear political lines about what we need to do...
“The physics part is not something we can compromise on. It's what we're given. Physics doesn't grade on the curve. It doesn't care about the complexities of politics. It doesn't award trophies for trying or meaning well. We will either take necessary action in the time allotted, or condemn our descendants to live forever with the unhappy consequences...”
- A Climate of Immediacy (April 30, 2019)
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Justifying the urgency of political action...
“We need an aggressive response to Climate now. Scientists last year identified a “12-year window” (time marches, and the window is less now) during which we must decarbonize by 50% (reducing fossil fuel use, etc) if we are to still be able to affect Climate in this way at all. The problem is accelerating, though, and if we wait, we will lose this option and wish we had it back. It seems hard and expensive and disruptive now, but what will follow will be much, much worse.”
- Angry Ocean (April 22, 2019)
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A mood piece about our climate fate...
“There had been talk not so many years back of sea level rise, always expressed in millimeters, like the drip drip drip of a tub that wouldn't quite shut off. It had sounded gentle, even aggravatingly slow, ... No one had said the water wouldn't just rise but come from every other angle, too. ...”
- Plutocratic Denial (November 11, 2018)
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Climate warning inspired by Martin Niemöller's ”First they came...“
“First sea level came for the islanders, and I continued to deny—
Because “those people” are poor, and this is their lot in life.
Then hurricanes took out some coastal cities, and I continued to deny—
Because I had business elsewhere, so got in my jet and steered clear.” - Limited-Time Offer (June 5, 2017)
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“Climate is cancer.
Delay is hope we've squandered.
We can't buy it back.” - Passing of the Salmon (September 25, 2015)
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A mood piece on impending extinction...
“The salmon aren’t quite gone, like the rest of the ecology. Climate change mostly, though we’re fishing out the oceans anyway, and not taking very good care of anything else. ”
- A Change of Climate (June 11, 2014)
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Another mood piece about impending extinction...
“I’m glad I saw this place before it became a desert, unable to grow olives and grapes. I’m glad I saw this place when its people were prosperous and proud. Science is an odd thing, and hard for some to trust. But science sees things that others do not. Things in the distance, ... The earth has a cancer, ...”
- That Creeping Feeling (November 8, 2010)
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Metaphors for Climate Change...
“...Cancer is a subtle enemy. It presents itself in such small ways, almost imperceptibly. We may see signs, but hope we don’t. It creeps... ”
- The Big C (September 14, 2010)
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Personalizing Climate Change...
“It's also common in discussions of Climate Change to talk about the effects on large systems ... I'm just going to talk about myself, what I fear will be the impact on me personally”
- George (May 16, 2009)
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A metaphorical tale about fixing Climate Change...
“When I was around the age of five, my parents gave me a little stuffed bear, who I named George...”
A Christmas Peril
My seasonal poem A Christmas Peril was written as a soft way to open a dialog about Climate Change at Christmas time. The arctic is rapidly melting, and with it Santa's home.
’Twas the first iceless Christmas, and all through the world,
it was warm enough now, the last snowflake had swirled.
The stockings were hung in the humid night air
in mem’ry of times when St. Nick would come there....
I’d point to the icebox then wave my arms wide,
“It was just like in there—but they had it outside.”
The kids couldn’t fathom the words they were told
of an ocean of water, turned ice by the cold....
My friend Mariela Riva collaborated with me on a Spanish translation as well.
En muy pocas horas vendrá la primera
navidad sin hielo en toda la tierra.
Las medias, colgadas, esperan pacientes,
así como hacían en días ausentes....