Increasingly urgent warnings about the impacts of global warming are coming fast and from every direction: from the UN’s latest IPCC report, from 13 federal agencies alerting us to financial impacts, from Princeton’s Michael Oppenheimer on the PBS Newshour, from Bill McKibbon speaking at Princeton University, and from Senator Bernie Sanders on national television.
Specific reports on regional changes have included: the rapidly melting Arctic, dying coral reefs in Australia, and the reduction of forests in the important Amazon basin.
All of this should remind us that scientific research is telling us that we are changing to our planet’s climates and environments, and to save them, we, in turn, need to change, and do so quickly.
And yet, with some exceptions such as California and maybe New Jersey, governments are not doing nearly enough to prevent the worst impacts of global warming. The great majority of nations that signed the Paris Climate Accord are doing nothing close to what they agreed to do. And here, we have a president who seems to have no idea, as he denies the entire problem.
So, what will this mean? These many warnings are informing us that the rises predicted for global temperatures are already exceeding those predictions. Already glaciers are melting faster than anticipated, and oceans are rising faster than predicted. In short, it means that our world is already changing. More extreme weather is here. The seven hottest yeas on record have occurred since 2006. Our own hot, humid summer was a local indication.
But elsewhere, in the Carolinas and Florida the changes took the form of stronger hurricanes. In California extended draught allowed record fires which decimated a number of communities. In Europe, the Mid-East, Africa, Australia, and even our South, agriculture was impacted by draught, reducing production, and the predictions are for it to get worse. Around the world, without adequate food and water, populations will suffer. And try to move.
In Princeton, and other aware, affluent communities, along with a number of states, governments (and here, the University) steps are being taken: buying electric and hybrid cars, installing solar panels, geothermal, and other green systems. But to have any hope of succeeding in sufficiently reducing emissions, people and governments need to join together to substantially ramp up the scale of these responses. Volkswagen in Germany just announced that it will be investing between 40 and 50 billion dollars to manufacture electric cars. This is the level needed around the world, and it is to be hoped that other car and truck companies – in fact, manufacturers of all types, as well as governments – will follow suit.
But to plan, finance, and implement the necessary changes at these levels, all organizations will need to work together. But because the poorer nations and communities don’t have the resources to make the necessary changes, others will have to step in to help. India, perhaps judging that its economy can’t risk the shift away from coal, is building more coal-fired power plants, despite the fact that its air is already unhealthy from burning expended crops and vehicular emissions. And winds blow that unhealthy air to other nations.
Here Princeton University grad students are working with government and industry to discover and adopt solutions. We, as communities, states, and the nation
need to expand such efforts. If the current administration continues to reject both the science and the solutions, then more states and companies and communities need to step up and join together.
Science has foreseen the problem for decades now, even if they underestimated the rate of change. But now science has provided us with a no-longer-debatable assessment of where we are. We have the latest
warnings. The future is upon us. The question is: how will we as a species respond? Nations came together to deal with the depleted ozone level.
That was a striking advance over the historical paradigm of reacting only when destruction or defeat were imminent. We need to do it again, at local, regional, and global levels. There is no longer doubt; rather there is urgency. The civilization we have known depends on it.
-Huck Fairman