Ann Arbor — In mid-July, Nature Climate Change published a global survey of over 9,000 scientists. Its findings should be like the sirens for a 5-alarm fire to our ears.
Scientists are trained to be cautious and to base anything they assert on firm empirical evidence and close analytical reasoning. They want to see a long term, consistent movement in the data before they will rule out random chance as an explanation.
Some 83% of respondents said that they worried about climate change “a great deal” or “quite a bit” and another 14% worried “a moderate amount.” In scientist terms, their hair is on fire. Only 3% are lackadaisical, and 3% of any human group are screw-ups.
There’s more. Two-thirds of them felt very strongly that fundamental changes to society, politics and economics are required to deal with the crisis. Another 25% strongly agreed (without the “very”),
Being practical people, these scientists did not expect the mere everyday working of technology or individual “lifestyle changes” to solve the crisis. There has to be big, systemic change — getting rid of gasoline-driven cars and increasing the energy efficiency of homes and buildings. They gave away their conclusion in the very second question they answered. Do we need big “fundamental changes to society, politics and economics?” They said resoundingly, “Yes! Yes we do.” And here’s the thing. Only governments operate at the scale and with the resources and nation-wide impact to effect such an enormous alteration.
That’s why they largely believe that environmental activist groups can make an impact, implicitly by lobbying legislators and politicians. That’s why they speak out on climate change. But I think we can conclude that most of them know that the carbon economy has to be extirpated root and branch, and fast.
The US government had outlays of $6.1 trillion in 2023. That is a gargantuan lever. As Archimedes said, “Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”
The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act dedicated $369 billion to clean energy and fighting climate change. That sum is bigger than the GDPs of numerous countries in the world, including Egypt, Pakistan, Chile, Greece, etc.
In Europe, the European Union’s installation of wind, water, solar and batteries and the turn in some countries to electric vehicles — along with greater energy efficiency — meant that total CO2 emissions from burning fuel in the European Union declined by almost 9% in 2023, even as the economy grew.
This is the kind of thing we need a lot more of. We only have 26 years to get the world to carbon zero. If we stop burning fossil fuels (gasoline, fossil gas, coal) by 2050, then the world will immediately cease heating up. And all the hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide we have put into the atmosphere since 1750 will be absorbed by the oceans. Some 65% to 80% of CO2 goes into the ocean over 20 to 200 years.
But if we go on putting billions of metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere past 2050, we will outrun the absorptive capacity of the oceans and everything, 100% of what we burn after that year, will stay in the atmosphere for centuries. The average increase in the temperature of the Earth’s surface over 1750 could exceed 5.4º F. (3º C.), which scientists are afraid could throw our climate system into chaos.
The changes in the Earth’s climate that we are already seeing, including massive wildfires, extreme heat waves, ocean temperatures over 100º F. (37.7º C.), massive hurricanes, and biblical floods, are unexpectedly severe for this stage of climate change. These surprises indicate that in the near future climate could get very, very nasty if we don’t change our ways. What if all the electricity lines get blown down? Civilization doesn’t work without electricity. What if all buildings have to be rebuilt to stand 160 mile an hour winds? What if we are driven underground by unbearable temperatures on the surface?
What can stop the worst of this mounting catastrophe from striking us, our children and grandchildren? Governments.
The 2024 American election is the most consequential in world history. Trump and his Project 2025 have made absolutely clear that they will gut all the climate progress and legislation of the Biden administration. They will put in even more incentives to burn coal, fossil gas and petroleum. They will vastly increase the US carbon dioxide emissions (4.8 billion metric tons in 2023, down from 4.9 bn. in 2022), taking us back to 2007 when we put out 6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide.
The whole world puts out 36.8 metric tons of CO2 annually. The US, with 4.23% of the people in the world, produces 13% of all the CO2. Moreover, the US is a world opinion leader, for better or for worse, and has enormous political and economic levers to move other countries in a green direction.
In contrast, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have in recent years become activists against climate change and will build on and expand on Biden’s green turn.
You have to rank issues in a two-party system. Maybe we can open up the two-party system over time (states can do this, as Maine has), but for the moment it is what we are stuck with. One party literally wants to destroy the Earth for the present-day grubby profits of a few. The other party is at least somewhat committed to fighting climate change, and is susceptible of being pushed even harder in that direction.
Nothing else matters as much. The war in Ukraine does not matter as much. The US-China confrontation in the South China Sea is not as pressing. The Israeli total war on Gaza civilians, horrific as it is, and Hamas terrorism against civilians, as horrific as that is, does not matter as much as the fate of the globe. It matters a great deal to me. It gives me nightmares. I’ve gone blue in the face arguing that this military campaign must cease immediately. But in fact both Israel and Gaza are destined to see significant loss of coastline to sea level rise over the next century (and even as early as 2050), with the potential for massive displacement of populations. Huge Medicanes or Mediterranean typhoons of the sort that washed Libya’s Derna into the sea last year will strike their towns. Unbearable heat waves will kill the elderly and children. The region is heating up at twice the global average.
The Israelis and Palestinians will not survive if they do not put away their weapons and cooperate to adapt to these changes. In my view, the main onus for this about-face lies on Israel, which is currently gripped by a far right wing ethno-nationalist expansionism, since it is by far the stronger party. Israeli technology and Palestinian familiarity with traditional methods of making the land flourish will be crucial. But we are speaking about a few million people.
There could be 1.2 billion climate refugees in the world by 2050.
Nothing else is as important. Vote Democratic. Tell your friends. Whip up enthusiasm. Once the Dems are in, if you don’t like their policies, argue with them and pressure them and change them. Trump and MAGA are not susceptible to grassroots pressures. They are in the grip of a handful of selfish billionaires and they want to dig your grave and then charge you to be buried in it.
Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, “Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires” and “Engaging the Muslim World.” He blogs at juancole.com, follow him at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page
From The Progressive Populist, September 15, 2024
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