Huck Fairman
On Jan. 28 evening the D&R Greenway Land Trust and The Green Hour radio team hosted a panel discussion at the Greenway’s upstairs auditoriumon exploring the outcomes of the 21st Climate Change Conference in Paris.This was the first of three such presentations focused on different aspects of: “Framing the Future. Seeking Solutions to Environmental Challenges. “
Dr. Stephen Pacala, Princeton professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and former director of the Princeton Environmental Institute, joined Dr. Anthony Broccoli, co-director, Rutgers Climate Institute, and Jeanne Herb, associate director of the Environmental Analysis and Communications Group at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, in giving their views of the Paris conference and the prospects for containing global warming.
D&R Greenway’s President and CEO Linda Mead introduced the participants and noted D&R’s widespread successes in preserving thousands of acres in Central Jersey — itself one answer to rising emissions and temperatures. Gery Juleff and John Gattuso of The Green Hour alternated in posing questions to the three scientists on where climate change stands now, after Paris.
Dr. Broccoli said that the conference was an “encouraging development.” The best thing about it was that “there was an agreement” among the 196 participating nations. Exactly what was agreed upon was a little less clear, but two of the panelists reminded the audience that the endeavor to save the planet is a “marathon, not a sprint.”
The question that this metaphor raises, however, is: do we have time to complete this marathon? Many scientists contend that we have only 10 to 20 years to turn the trend around before it cascades beyond human control. One of the conference’s positive provisions is that the treaty will become legally binding if at least 55 percent of the nations together representing 55 percent of global emissions sign the agreement on this year’s Earth Day.
But Dr. Pacala cautioned that the agreed-upon goal of restraining warming to 2 degrees Celsius is arbitrary, chosen because it is a convenient, whole number, with little relation to measurable and widely varied climate changes already taking place.
The evening’s printed program quoted Dr. James Hansen, former NASA science director now at Columbia University, and among the original scientists detecting and warning of global warming, as protesting: “It’s a fraud really, a fake. It’s just bull… for them to say: ‘we’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There’s no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will continue to be burned.”
Several of the panel countered more positively that China, literally choking on its own emissions, is taking a lead to reduce those emissions, while Europe is way ahead of most of the world in responding, and the United States might be poised, in the private and public sectors, to take significant steps, including inventing and adopting new technologies.
Two of the night’s speakers also noted that the vast global emissions clamor for carbon taxes, locally, nationally, and internationally — as Europe and British Columbia have done, and as Massachusetts and California are considering — the purpose being to equalize fuel costs and encourage renewable energy. But Dr. Pacala observed that one weakness with the accord is that there are no mechanisms to compel global compliance, nor are there any penalties for failing to honor the accord. In fact, he observed, there are not even any proposals for financing the necessary changes, which will not come cheaply — although those costs will be hugely smaller than those we will incur if we do nothing.
Part of the optimism coming out of the accord stems from the apparent global recognition that the issue faced by all is self-preservation. And Dr. Pacala reminded us that the leading emitter, China, can quickly adopt a cap and trade or carbon tax now that it acknowledges the threat. In this country, the implied predicament is that while polls show a majority of Americans recognize global warming as a manmade threat, and want something done, too many in the Republican Party are living in the 18th century, or are catering to those who do — a time before industrialization lead to increased populations, interconnected economies and communities, and with the adoption of coal and oil, mushrooming CO2 emissions.
But again balancing the evening’s views, the printed program quoted UK Prime Minister David Cameron:” It’s a moment to remember and a huge step forward in helping to secure the future of our planet.”
We are thus left to choose, or compromise, between which approach will bring the best outcome. Do we celebrate this first, incomplete step and slowly ratchet up subsequent steps, or do we stare eyes-wide-open at the inadequacies of the accord and demand more effective, immediate action?
The panelists (unlike Hansen) did not come down squarely in either camp, but they did voice several of the “scary” repercussions that will descend on us if we don’t respond adequately and quickly. Among the scary possibilities, Dr. Pacala described the great quantities of methane now frozen in the deep oceans that could, with ocean warming, rise into the atmosphere and deliver a coup de grace to civilization as we’ve known it. Connected to this, the melting ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica could, if they melt and join the oceans, accelerate that warming beyond our control. What science does not know now is what degree of ocean warming might precipitate that thawing and methane rising.
One audience member, in the following question and answer session, asked how do we know that this global warming is not natural. Both Dr. Broccoli and Dr. Pacala pointed out that science has had, particularly using satellites, the ability to measure, among other things, the solar radiation reaching the earth’s surface. This scientific capability has revealed that there has been no increase in solar radiation — if anything, a small decrease. Nor has there been any volcanic activity to alter the earth’s temperature.
Measuring the steady increase of CO2 in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution has been a relatively simple measurement, now tracked back to that time and beyond, through the analysis of blocks from ice sheets which reveal temperatures and CO2 levels long ago. In short, there exists the factual evidence that never before has this planet warmed so rapidly, and that this warming corresponds to the increase in CO2 levels, whose primary source is us.
Thus possibly the Paris Conference’s chief achievement is that 196 nations of the world now accept this development, and recognize something must be done. The broad outlines of a response are in place. How they will be acted upon remains to be worked out.
But the conference was a necessary first step. The hope is that as this consensus sinks in around the world, and as nations acknowledge the changes already unfolding, action will follow. Europe offers policy blueprints through its turning to renewable energy; China, which now recognizes the need to act, has the industrial capacity to do so, once committed. What is needed is the global political will to follow through.
If the Paris Conference was the necessary first step, there is little question that our fate hangs on whether enough key nations choose to take the next, essential steps. (Reports that falling gas prices have led more Americans to return to SUVs is a bewildering development.)
Jeanne Herb focused her remarks more locally, on what happened to New Jersey in Hurricane Sandy and subsequent related issues — where many poorer and largely ignored communities along the Jersey coast suffered flooding and still have not completely recovered. There, too, a debate similar to the worldwide one is underway: do communities, counties, and states take vigorous, costly, preventive steps to reduce emissions, sea level rise, and recurring flooding, with the devastation that follows, or do they respond only as the immediate need arises, leaving local owners to prepare as they see fit and can afford?
Among the three panelist some differences of opinion were hinted at concerning the job New Jersey’s governor has done in allotting restoration funds following the hurricane and in preparing for the next one, seen to a lesser extent in this January’s northeaster.
But then Dr. Pacala, turning back to the national (and global) scopes, voiced his hope that the many bright and innovative young people he encounters in schools, in start-up companies, and in established tech companies across the country may create another revolution, a technological revolution. He has witnessed and spoken with many working assiduously to devise some break-through to lower emissions through cleaner power generation and greater storage and transmission capacity.
In these remarks, he seemed to be betting on this path, more than on the hope alone that enough nations will soon join efforts to head off the worst outcomes of global warming. He summed it up by saying we need to do everything, in every direction, that we can.
Huck Fairman is a Princeton author who writes SOLUTIONS regularly in The Princeton Packet.
