My Turn: Carbon and our changing climate
Organizations funded by supporters of the fossil fuel industry have long denied human influence on our climate. Two of them, the Heartland Institute and the International Climate Science Coalition, recently published an op-ed in the Spectrum.
In the past these two groups have claimed human activity has no significant impact on our climate, but apparently not anymore. As internal fossil fuel industry documents released in court now confirm, they knew their products drive dangerous changes in our climate, after years of waging a denial campaign mirroring the tobacco industry. The recent op-ed also stops this denial, leaving only a very weak final complaint: climate scientists use the word “carbon” dishonestly. Really?
Let’s review the science about carbon, which you may remember from high school science classes. All known life forms are carbon-based. When plants and animals die, their carbon is returned to the Earth and compressed over millennia, forming “fossil fuels” (coal, oil, gas). Carbon forms the basic structure of all plants and animals as they come to life and grow. Animals breath oxygen (O2) and exhaust carbon dioxide (CO2); plants “breath” CO2 and exhaust O2. CO2 in the air rises to the atmosphere, maintaining a layer that reflects Earth’s radiated heat back to it in order to maintain livable temperatures (the “greenhouse” effect), and is absorbed by the oceans to sustain sea life. This carbon cycle balances carbon in the land, sea and air/atmosphere that enables and fosters life.
Since the industrial revolution (especially since 1950), we humans have been drastically upsetting that balance by burning massive amounts carbon in its most concentrated form as fossil fuels, moving carbon from the land to the air and sea. This burning process joins a carbon atom with 2 oxygen atoms from the air, creating CO2, which is released from smoke stacks and tailpipes into the air as “carbon emissions”, adding to the atmospheric CO2 layer that moderates the Earth’s temperature and changing the sea’s chemistry. Terms like “zero carbon”, “carbon free”, “decarbonization” are shorthand for “reducing carbon emissions”. Humans have also been very busy burning and logging forests, drastically impacting Earth’s ability to process CO2. The resulting excessive atmospheric CO2 warms the whole planet — the land, sea and air — “global warming”.
So, what’s the matter with a little warming? Weather is driven by air and water temperatures. Even though the average worldwide temperature increases may seem small, there are big temperature increases in places that drive weather. As temperatures increase, we see the impacts on weather events and patterns, affecting the location, frequency and severity of storms, heat waves, precipitation, flooding, droughts and aridification. Increased air and water temperatures are causing polar ice to melt and sea levels to rise, which is causing unusual storm surge impacts now, and will eventually flood the world’s biggest cities. Desert areas like St George are heating far faster than others – our days over 90, 100 and 110 degrees have been steadily increasing for 30 years. “Climate” is basically long-term weather trends. “Global warming” is causing “climate change”. Even though these terms have become polarizing, they have a scientific basis.
Burning carbon also releases toxic pollutants, which cause illness and millions of premature deaths worldwide yearly. Visit Salt Lake City for a demonstration. But that’s a minor side-effect when compared with the subtle, longer-term effect of CO2. Unchecked, it will force mass migrations, including humans escaping floods, drought/aridification and famine, searching for water, food, livable temperatures. There will be some disagreements over who get to move to these livable places. Normal civil society will be hard pressed, which is why our Defense Department calls climate change our most significant security threat. Even if we go “zero carbon” right now, there is such inertia in the climate system that we won’t be able to stop the trend quickly. And there are “feedbacks” like thawing tundra which will rapidly increase emissions, perhaps making warming impossible to stop. This is not some distant future problem. Carbon emissions must be drastically reduced in the next 10-20 years. It can be done, but not overnight. We better get going.
National politics have cooled progress on this hot topic, thanks to the fossil fuel industry and their advocates. Even John McCain could not move Congress to act. We need to start pushing from the bottom-up instead of waiting for top-down action. Our state government passed a resolution last spring to reduce carbon emissions. Go Utah! Yet Utah recently celebrated an agreement with Mexico to export coal. Stop Utah! Our battles over public lands in Utah are largely about fossil fuel development, as we continue to push a carbon-based economy. Many of our local governments and utilities, including St George, have enacted policies discouraging clean energy. This must change.
Our coal-producing communities have fueled our lives, but now that the danger is known, we must move to clean energy and support the transition to clean energy jobs. The most direct way is through our free-market system with a national carbon fee/dividend policy, now stalled by politics. We can make a difference on the state level: this year a bill will be introduced in our state legislature to tax carbon in exchange for reducing other taxes, encouraging the switch to carbon-free energy. This recognizes the true cost of carbon fuels to our health and future, and supports the transition to clean energy jobs.
We can address it in our own backyards: support clean energy solutions locally, personally start moving in the right direction before your kids have to pay a terrible price for our ignorance and inaction.
Tom Butine is a member of the St. George chapter of the Citizens Climate Lobby.