Climate Change/Global Warming and Optimism

Optimism only when you remove rose-colored fantasy goggles and see the facts.

I have uncomfortable feelings and thoughts about the recent spate of optimistic climate future presentations — Yale Climate Connections’ boosting of Rebecca Solnit’s Not Too Late is a prime example. I usually wind up feeling that anything I have to say will be viewed as the bad thing in the punch bowl. Debby Downer.

So I will own that label, and say that the evidence for managing climate change thus far is not optimistic. Not in 5, 10, 20, or 100 years. I would very much like to be proven wrong. But I do not believe I will live long enough to see a sustainable, stable planet.

I follow climate forecasting a fair bit. I know that it’s necessary and insufficient for people around the world to vote, to demand justice and climate action from governments and corporations. It’s important for everyone to recognize and enact that which individuals can do — cut out meat and dairy, bicycle, put solar on the roof, install heat pumps, etc. But these fixes do not apply to the majority of the world’s human population, who do our suffering for us. And they have the nice effect of feeling we’re doing our part.

Here is a graphic from French economist Thomas Piketty illustrating the personal carbon footprints around the world, showing our emissions from domestic consumption, public and private investments, import and export of goods and services traded with the rest of the world.

So we see that it’s on the financial/economic/wealth top 10% of North Americans.

The middle 40% of North Americans could eliminate 100% of our carbon footprints and still not significantly impact the carbon footprint of the wealthiest 10% of North Americans, and their 73 tonnes of CO2e per person per year.

Could reducing our middle-class carbon footprints — domestic consumption, public and private investments, etc. — somehow drive down the impacts of the top 10% ? Well, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell is only now realizing that the economic behavior models taught at the Chicago School are faulty.

It’s good to learn at his age. That’s good. But he did not, so far as I have read, acknowledge that Herman Daly’s Ecological Economics is the more accurate model set. And we should not bet on Mr. Powell’s revelation catalyzing change in corporate or public policy any time soon.

Four countries are responsible for half of all historical CO₂ emissions. I’m sure you know without looking what nation is #1. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-cumulative-co2

And here are the industries with the highest emissions: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-by-fuel-line

14 billion tons of CO2 emissions per year from coal alone, as opposed to the personal 73 tonnes/year by the richest 10% of North Americans.

So, clearly, the entities that have got to reduce GHG emissions are the fossil fuel corporations.
So how do we convince the fossil fuel corporations to live up to their commitments to reduce emissions? In 2022, subsidies worldwide for fossil fuel consumption skyrocketed to more than USD 1 trillion, according to the IEA’s latest estimate, by far the largest annual value ever seen. https://www.iea.org/reports/fossil-fuels-consumption-subsidies-2022. That translates to fossil fuels being subsidized at the rate of $13 million dollars per minute, according to the International Monetary Fund. Coal, oil, and gas received $7 trillion in subsidies in 2022, despite being the primary source of the climate crisis.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies-imf-report-climate-crisis-oil-gas-coal?CMP=share_btn_tw

What happens if we stay on our current and most politically probable course?

The worst projection for climate change in 2023, is that the chance for the average global temperature to rise above 1.5°C has increased to almost 50% for the next five year period between 2022 and 2026. https://greenly.earth/en-us/blog/ecology-news/climate-change-in-2022-where-do-we-stand

What, then, can we do?
1. Accept the fact that, like Charles Hamilton Houston, we will make plans for a better future that we will not live to see. (You could look him up.)
2. Get our Public Employee Retirement Funds to divest from fossil fuels. CalPERS, the largest PERS in the USA, claims it has a fiduciary duty to not divest. Facts dispute this position. https://fossilfreeca.org/financial-outcomes-divesting/
3. Vote for local, regional, state, and national representatives who prioritize dealing with the climate crisis.
4. If we have investment portfolios, discuss divestment with our financial advisors.
5. Teach our children, grandchildren, friends, family with kindness and grace, to live as participating, thoughtful citizens.
6. Learn and use every regulatory agency that can fight corporate manipulation and bullying and know whom to contact when you need to litigate. See, for example, these magnificent children in Montana, who won their lawsuit against the state for failing to enact and maintain policies that ensure them a safe and healthy environment, guaranteed to them under the Montana constitution.
7. Come up with other devices.
8. Don’t stop. Go.