Rolling Stone<\/span>, McKibben lays out exactly what climate change will mean for us, in clear prose based on scientific facts. I hope you go to the link I\u2019ve provided and read the whole article, but in this post, I\u2019ll lay out for you some of its highlights. I want to get this information out to as many people as possible because it is more important than almost anything else I have read in a long time.<\/p>\nMcKibben begins the piece with some startling facts: This June broke 2,132 high temperature records across the United States. \u201cThat followed,\u201d he said, \u201cthe warmest May on record for the northern hemisphere \u2013 the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7×10 to the 99th, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n
McKibben then gets to the main point of the piece \u2013that\u00a0 there are \u201cThree simple numbers that add up to future global catastrophe.\u201d These three simple numbers come from an arithmetical analysis first published by financial analysts in the U.K. that has been presented at various environmental conferences but hasn\u2019t yet penetrated the general public.<\/p>\n
The First Number: 2 degrees Celsius<\/strong><\/p>\nThe 2009 Copenhagen climate conference was, according to McKibben and most other environmentalists, a complete failure. \u201cNeither China nor the U.S., which between them are responsible for 40% of global carbon emissions, was prepared to offer dramatic concessions\u2026The accord did<\/em> contain one important number, however.\u201d It recognized that the increase in global temperature should stay below two degrees Celsius, and went on to declare that \u201cwe agree that deep cuts in global emissions are required\u2026so as to hold the increase in global temperature below two degrees Celsius.\u201d<\/p>\nSo far, we have raised the earth\u2019s average temperature to 0.8 degrees Celsius, and, as McKibben says, \u201cthat has caused far more damage than most scientists expected.\u201d For instance, a third of summer sea ice in the Arctic is gone. Because of this and much other damage, many scientists believe that two degrees is too lenient of a goal. However, scientific data had to take a back seat to political realism, and the world agreed on the two degree target.<\/p>\n
The Second Number: 565 Gigatons<\/strong><\/p>\n\u201cScientists estimate that humans can pour roughly 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by midcentury and still have some reasonable hope of staying below two degrees,\u201d says McKibben. This idea of a carbon budget was born about ten years ago when scientists started figuring out how much fossil fuel we could burn and not increase earth\u2019s temperature by more than two degrees Celsius. As I said before, we\u2019ve already increased that temperature by 0.8 degrees, so we\u2019re almost halfway there. And, as McKibben says, \u201ccomputer models calculate that even if we stopped increasing CO2 now, the temperature would likely still rise another 0.8 degrees, as previously released carbon continues to overheat the atmosphere. That means we\u2019re already three-quarters of the way to the two-degree target.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, all indicators point to the fact that the 565 gigaton number will be as hard to control as two degrees one. \u201cIn fact,\u201d says McKibben, \u201cstudy after study predicts that carbon emissions will keep growing by roughly three percent a year \u2013 and at that rate, we\u2019ll blow through our 565-gigaton allowance in 16 years\u2026.\u201d That would be in 2028.\u00a0 A child born today would be a junior in high school the year we reach the 565-gigaton number.<\/p>\n
McKibben quotes Fatih Birol, the IEA\u2019s chief economist, as saying, \u201cWhen I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of about six degrees.\u201d And, says McKibben, \u201cThat\u2019s almost 11 degrees Fahrenheit, which would create a planet straight out of science fiction.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Third Number: 2,795 Gigatons<\/strong><\/p>\nThis third number,” says McKibben, is the scariest of all, because it represents the fossil fuel that we are planning to burn in the future, the proven coal, oil, and gas reserves still in the ground. And, if you hadn\u2019t already noticed, this number \u2013 2.795 \u2013 is five times higher that 565 \u2013 the number of gigatons of carbon dioxide that beyond which the earth becomes unsafe for human habitation.<\/p>\n
McKibben explains it like this: \u201cThink of two degrees Celsius as the legal drinking limit \u2013 equivalent to the 0.08 blood alcohol level below which you might get away with driving home. The 565 gigatons is how many drinks you could have and still stay below that limit \u2013 the six beers, say, you might consume in an evening. And the 2,795 gigatons? That\u2019s the three 12-packs the fossil-fuel industry has on the table, already opened and ready to pour.\u201d<\/p>\n
McKibben goes on to explain that, although this coal, gas, and oil is still in the ground, the industries that control it are already borrowing money against it, as a known asset. In fact, these reserves are their primary asset, what gives their companies their value today. John Fullerton,a former managing director at JP Morgan who now runs the Capital Institute,\u00a0 figures that at today\u2019s market value, the 2,795 gigatons of carbon emissions are worth about $27 billion.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can have a healthy fossil-fuel balance sheet\u201d says McKibben, \u201cor a relatively healthy planet \u2013 but now that we know the numbers, it looks like you can\u2019t have both. Do the math: 2,795 is five times 565. That\u2019s how the story ends.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis sounds pretty bleak,\u201d you say, \u201cpretty hopeless.\u201d And so it does. But, without an honest look at the numbers, we have no hope of dealing with them. McKibben states several times that environmental efforts to stem the tide of global warming have failed. But we can learn from these failures, he says, because now we know what strategies don\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0 work.<\/p>\nChanging Individual Lifestyles<\/strong><\/p>\n\u201cMost of us are ambivalent about going green,\u201d says McKibben. We buy both<\/em> weird, twisty light bulbs and<\/em> flat screen TVs, only 3 percent of us have bought hybrid cars, and only 4 percent have reduced our utility use.<\/p>\n\u201cGiven a hundred years, you could conceivably change lifestyles enough to matter,\u201d says McKibben, but time is precisely what we lack.\u201d<\/p>\n
Working Through the Political System<\/strong><\/p>\nEnvironmentalists have lobbied Congressmen endlessly, trying to convince them of the perils of global warming, but with limited success.<\/span><\/p>\nSometimes this has worked. Barack Obama, for instance, was able to make a significant change by increasing the fuel efficiency required for automobiles, but he\u2019s also gone out of his way to push the practices of fracking and mining. \u201cProducing more oil and gas here at home has been, and will continue to be, a critical part of an all-of-the-above energy strategy,\u2019 he explained in March. So, he\u2019s pushing for America to produce more wind power and<\/em> more fossil fuel power at the same time.<\/span><\/p>\nA New Movement<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nMcKibben posits that what we need now is \u201ca rapid, transformative change\u201d in our approach to fighting global warming. \u201cAnd,\u2019 he adds, \u201cmovements require enemies.\u201d We have that enemy, he says. It is the fossil fuel industry itself. Environmentalists have, for years, been trying to convince fossil-fuel industries \u201cthat they should turn away from coal, oil and gas and transform themselves more broadly into energy companies.\u201d That approach seemed to work for awhile, at least with a few companies. Around 2000, BP named itself \u201cBeyond Petroleum,\u201d but its investments in alternative energy were meager, at best, and eventually disappeared. Shell shut down its solar and wind operations in 2009. <\/span><\/p>\n\u201cLots of companies do rotten things in the course of their business \u2013 pay terrible wages, make people work in sweatshops \u2013 and we pressure them to change those practices,\u201d says Naomi Klein,an anti-corporate writer who is working on a new book about climate change. \u201cBut these numbers make clear that with the fossil-fuel industry, wrecking the planet is their business model. It\u2019s what they do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThe five biggest oil companies in the world have made more than $1 trillion in profits since the year 2000. And, \u201cmuch of that profit stems from a single historical accident,\u201d says McKibben. The fossil-fuel industry is the only business allowed to dump its waste, carbon dioxide, without penalty. The reason for this is that until 25 years ago, we didn\u2019t know that CO2 was bad for the planet. But, now that we know, what can we do about it? The real meaning of this new math, says McKibben, is that \u201cit could, plausibly, give rise to a real movement.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nMcKibben points to the campaign in the 1980\u2019s demanding divestment from companies doing business in South Africa as an example of a real movement. This campaign, that rose first on college campuses, eventually convinced more than 80 cities, 25 states, and 19 counties to take economic action against companies connected to the apartheid regime.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\nOf course, the fossil-fuel industry is a much tougher enemy than apartheid. But, as Bob Massie, former anti-apartheid activist who helped found the Investor Network on Climate Risk, said, \u201cGiven the severity of the climate crisis, a comparable demand that our institutions dump stock from companies that are destroying the planet would not only be appropriate but effective. The message is simple: We have had enough. We must sever ties with those who profit from climate change \u2013 now.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nMy Take<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nYikes!! This is pretty depressing stuff! McKibben makes the situation seem almost hopeless. Beyond that, he told us that both individual and governmental efforts to stop global warming have been a failure. So, should we just eat, drink, and be merry while Rome burns (not to mix metaphors)? I don\u2019t think so.<\/span><\/p>\nI disagree that individual and governmental efforts have been a failure. Governments all over the world are working on the problem of climate change, with differing levels of success \u2013 from hybrid cars to alternative energy production. People are aware of the problem. But we need more than these scattered attempts to make a change. We need a united <\/em>front! We, the people of the world need to get together on this. That\u2019s why climate change conferences are so important. Unfortunately, the results of these conferences have been disappointing because too many countries put their own self-interests above the common good. All of us need to put our petty differences aside in order to save our home from destruction, much the same way neighbors get together to help each other when fire threatens to wipe out their neighborhood. India, China, and Brazil need to stop thinking that they don\u2019t need to fight climate change in their countries because it was the West, after all, that created most of these green house gasses. We\u2019re all in this together!<\/span><\/p>\nI agree with McKibben that we need an enemy in this fight, and that the coal, gas, and oil industries are<\/em> that enemy. We need to fight them in every way imaginable. California is one of the few states in the nation where these extraction companies are not taxed on what they take out of our<\/em> ground. How could that be? Why don\u2019t we tax them? Dumping the stock of companies that refuse to cooperate in limiting carbon emissions would be another way to fight them. We should all be asking ourselves, \u201cHow can we fight these industries that are destroying our home?\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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Bill McKibben, head of 350.org, the organization I mentioned in the previous post, \u201cClimate Change,\u201d is a renowned American environmentalist author, journalist, and now the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College in Vermont. In 2010, the Boston Globe called him \u201cprobably the nation\u2019s leading environmentalist,\u201d and Foreign Policy magazine named him one one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdonthewire.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdonthewire.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdonthewire.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdonthewire.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdonthewire.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/birdonthewire.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":629,"href":"https:\/\/birdonthewire.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions\/629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdonthewire.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdonthewire.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdonthewire.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdonthewire.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a>Bill McKibben, head of 350.org,<\/strong> the organization I mentioned in the previous post, \u201cClimate Change,\u201d is a renowned American environmentalist author, journalist, and now the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College in Vermont. In 2010, the Boston Globe<\/span> called him \u201cprobably the nation\u2019s leading environmentalist,\u201d and Foreign Policy magazine named him one one of the 100 most important global thinkers. These are just a few of his many accolades.<\/p>\n