Enlight21

Author: Gladwyn d'Souza | Category: Environment | Date: 09-24-2021

Photo of the NY subway from https://abc7ny.com/weather/wet-commute-for-nyc-as-water-pours-into-subway-stations/4277232/ during hurricane IDA

We have met the enemy and he is in the mirror. News flash… No he’s not in the mirror. According to the latest IPCC report “countries and corporations have delayed curbing fossil-fuel emissions for so long that we can no longer stop the impact of climate change from intensifying over the coming decades.”

OMG really, the bad guys are our government and their Citizens United enabled donors? Why am I not surprised! By the end of the century the IPCC says we remain on the road to almost 3 degrees of warming. By way of contrast we are at 1.2 deg of warming today and are already busy meeting climate refugees from areas of devastating floods, fires, and droughts- those last two a little too close to home here in California. You can just imaging the world we are bequeathing our grandchildren at almost 3.0 deg of warming!

Yet there are still elected officials who repeat fossil fuel company talking points. That talking point used to be twenty years ago that global warming didn’t exist. The IPCC came along and said that the 97% of scientist who don’t work for the fossil fuel industry disagreed. Global warming was occurring and if we did nothing it would get worse. Then came hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. The Bush government fumbled and everyone suddenly woke up. Corporations and their paid legislators switched to global warming’s here, but there isn’t anything we can do about it. No said scientists like Marc Jacobson at Stanford. Not only can we solve the problem with wind solar and water, but these solutions exist and are gathering dust on the shelf. Dust them off, invest, and you could be 100% clean and renewable by 2030.

Then as if things couldn’t worse epic fires blazed across Australia. Not to be outdone California went ahead and burned paradise down in 2018. Global warming wasn’t just here it had set our political pants on fire. Industry talking points switched to global warming is here and devastating but we can’t afford to fix it. No said scientists we can not only afford to fix it but doing nothing was more expensive. All that fire, smoke, insurance companies going broke, health care impacts, lost food systems was adding up to real money instead of just fixing climate change.

Having delayed to this point the fossil fuels talking points will switch again. Yes it’s here and can be fixed but now it’s too late. You might as well continue buying our products and act like it’d doing you good. Probably anticipating that talking point the latest IPCC report called Code Red For Humanity says yes you are already tasting the medicine you thought you had left to your grandkids. Coming decades will be devastating because of the built in warming. The can kicked down the road had boomeranged in other words. But we could make rapid change by getting off natural gas now and eliminating air pollution. That will buy us a couple of decades to figure out how to eliminate fossil fuels.

Around the region some local policy makers have heard the call. Cities around the Bay Area have put processes in place to remove natural gas from the home and work environment. Other cities have begun to address eliminating gas in existing buildings with a phase out plan. The advocacy has expanded nationwide after starting in Berkeley.

Through all of this the IPCC has remained the one beacon of sanity in a Washington swamp. Naturally they have a big party planned. All the nations of the world will be meeting in Glasgow to fashion an agreement to keep warming below two degrees. It called a Conference of Parties and this will be the 26th time they’ve met. COP26 offers an opportunity to build on Paris and develop a framework for not exceeding two degrees of warming. This is the time to measure how well the greenhouse gas reduction programs are working and ratchet them up if they are not working. At the end of the day the question comes down to George Floyd’s video. Do we believe what we are seeing or do we need an investigation? Fossil fuels are the culprit. We know that. It’s time for politicians to allow people to make the right choice by offering credible alternatives to natural gas and petroleum.

About: Gladwyn d'Souza