Climate Change

[Mark]

* The US is the largest per capita CO₂ emitter worldwide, releasing 4.4 metric tons of carbon per person in 2017.

Total US fossil fuel CO₂ emissions are projected to have grown 2.5% during 2018, despite
the US using more renewable energy than ever before. This report uses data available as of
early November 2018 to predict emissions for the whole year.

* However, I have to disagree with the first claim about the US's 4.4 tonnes per capita figure being
the "highest" [cited by ScienceNews.org] because it's not by any means.  Australia, for example,
(and due largely to our tiny 25 million population) emits around 17.1 tonnes per capita per annum.

We suck.

[Alan V]

Section 8: Why it isn’t (yet) too late

The end of the world

The world isn’t ending, but it most certainly is changing faster than we would like. While it’s already too late to prevent certain damages to the environment and to ourselves, it’s not yet too late to prevent further damages, including the worst of them. We can reduce our emissions, adapt to changes in local climates, sequester carbon through a variety of methods, and even relocate species if we need to.

Human psychology and human choices

So we know what the problems are and what we need to do about them. What is preventing us from taking action on the scale necessary?

Human psychology is one of the biggest barriers to tackling climate change. We are not well-equipped to deal with large, abstract, slow-moving, complex, technical problems, especially when they arise as the result of our own outstanding successes. We intended to do ourselves and others good by creating our remarkable, technological society. How can we now be the bad guys in all this?

Too often we fail to anticipate problems, fail to perceive problems, and fail to make adequate efforts to prevent problems. Sometimes we don’t accept responsibility for our own contributions to problems. This can lead to a “tragedy of the commons,” where everyone takes from common resources but no one maintains them. And climate change seems especially difficult, since it’s such a huge problem with so many terrible implications. We all have only so much fear and complexity we can manage without feeling overwhelmed.

Our problem can be stated simply enough: How can we continue to do good to people in the present while preserving the planet for the future? We’re not the bad guys yet. There’s still time to stop the worst that could occur. We can pay the short-term costs for the long-term benefits, especially since we’re the people who are changing the climate to begin with.

Many ways to deal with the problem

Climate change is a big problem caused by lots of little choices worldwide, so lots of little choices can slow it down and ultimately stop it. In other words, everyone can contribute to the solution. We all have many ways to help tackle the problem, and we can do something every day. These solutions break down into several large categories, including both cutting back on emissions (mitigation) and rolling with the changes (adaptation). Again, the biggest unknown variable in climate change is whether we will react on the necessary scale quickly enough.

[Alan V]

Carbon footprints

The concept of our carbon footprints is central to understanding how to reduce climate change. This is best thought of as a carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) footprint, since we simultaneously have to reduce several different greenhouse gases and not just CO₂.

Three-quarters of all greenhouse gases since the industrial revolution have been emitted, not surprisingly, by industrial nations. Since the poorest countries use little energy per capita, they generally need not make great efforts to reduce climate change. The exceptions are China and India, whose huge populations have great impacts. China overtook the U.S. in 2008 to become the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. The 15 largest emitters, in order, are: China, the U.S., the European Union, India, the Russian Federation, Japan, Korea, Canada, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, Australia, and South Africa.

But those are present emissions. Historically, the U.S. was responsible for 30.3% and Europe for 27.7% of the carbon emissions which have built up in our atmosphere. It isn’t surprising, then, that many developing countries consider our advantage unjust.

Per capita carbon footprints

Different countries have different per capita carbon footprints. Annually, Americans average a 15 ton carbon footprint. This doesn’t even count the emissions other countries produce with their manufacturing to create the products we buy. The global average carbon footprint is only 4 tons annually in comparison. The Chinese only have a per capita carbon footprint of 7.5 tons annually, and the Indians 2 tons.

The average American is responsible for twice as much CO₂ emission as the average Japanese or European, which means we could have roughly the same standard of living while burning far fewer fossil fuels if we were more clever about it. U.S. emissions dropped by about 12% between 2005 and 2012 because of the major recession in 2008, increasing auto efficiency standards, converting power stations from coal to gas, and the solar and wind boom. We have room for a lot more improvements, and we obviously have the capacity to change.

Since 1973, CO₂ emissions have increased about 50%. With more people comes more carbon. With more prosperity and economic growth comes more carbon. And with less energy efficiency comes more carbon.

[Alan V]

We suck.

Americans are improving pretty quickly compared with other countries, but that's mainly because we have so much room for improvement.  

[SYZ]

"Although the power of consumers is strong, it pales in comparison to that of international corporations and only governments have the power to keep these interests in check.  Usually, we regard governments as having a duty to protect citizens. So why is it that we allow them to skirt these responsibilities just because it is more convenient to encourage individual action? Asking individuals to bear the burden of global warming shifts the responsibilities from those who are meant to protect to those who are meant to be protected. We need to hold governments to their responsibilities first and foremost.  A recent report found that just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions since 1988. Incredibly, a mere 25 corporations and state-owned entities were responsible for more than half of global industrial emissions in that same period."

I agree in total with this report.  It's the same here in Australia, even at council (local government) level.
For example, the onus is on the consumer almost totally to recycle plastics, paper, bottles and cans, electronic
devices, light globes, car batteries etc, but with very little or no commensurate support from our councils.

For example, most Australian companies couldn't give a stuff about the unnecessary plastics they force onto
the consumer, with much of it entering into our waterways and oceans.  And of course the production of plastics
is centred on hydrocarbons extracted from oil.

Scientists writing in the journal PLOS One said recently that plastics emit the greenhouse gases methane and
ethylene when they're exposed to sunlight and degrade. The researchers carried out tests on such common plastic
products as water bottles, shopping bags and food containers.

Plastic drinking straws are the latest target of activists, who say they're used only once and discarded because
most can't be recycled.  When I was a kid (hehe) drinking straws were made out of waxed paper, until fucking
McDonald's introduced plastic straws in 1971.

[SYZ]

Americans are improving pretty quickly compared with other countries, but that's mainly because we have so much room for improvement.

In the United States, emissions of carbon dioxide are projected to increase 2.5 percent in 2018.

—Josie Garthwaite, Stanford University News Service, 5 December 2018.

[SYZ]

Shouldn't that be 14.4 metric tons per capita for Americans?

Good question... 4.4 tonnes doesn't sound right does it.  

I'll recheck my source and get back on this.  

Later EDIT:  I took the US 4.4 tonnes figure from this site:      ScienceNews, Global carbon dioxide emissions will hit a record high in 2018.

Unless I've misinterpreted the data, the figure must be a misprint?   

[Alan V]

Shouldn't that be 14.4 metric tons per capita for Americans?

Good question... 4.4 tonnes doesn't sound right does it.  

I'll recheck my source and get back on this.  

Later EDIT:  I took the US 4.4 tonnes figure from this site:      ScienceNews, Global carbon dioxide emissions will hit a record high in 2018.

Unless I've misinterpreted the data, the figure must be a misprint?   

It's got to be a misprint.  If not, it's GREAT news! 

[Alan V]

I=PAT

Back in 1896, the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius realized that burning fossil fuels would change the climate, but he predicted that it would take us 3000 years to do so. What he didn’t foresee were changes in three variables: population, affluence, and technology, all of which increased the amount of fossil fuels we burn and greatly increased the rate at which the climate changed as a result. In reality, changing the climate only took us 150 years.

In the early 1970s, ecologists Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren came up with a simple formula to capture how these variables create environmental change: I=PAT. In other words, the impact to the environment (I) equals the population (P) times affluence (A) times the technology used to achieve it (T). So to reduce the impact, we can reduce any or all of these multiplying variables. We can reduce our population, we can reduce our consumption, and we can change to less impacting technologies. While most people will certainly prefer the last strategy, each has its place in our considerations. Some researchers have even claimed that since we have let the problem of climate change go so far, we need to tackle all three variables at once to have any chance of success.

[Alan V]

Population: overshoot

Scientists estimate that at present, our human populations consume 1.5 times what the earth can sustainably produce, since it takes approximately 54 acres to support an average human. If everyone lived like Americans, that number would be 5 times what the earth can produce. In other words, we are consuming the planet’s resources at rates which cannot go on indefinitely. We have pulled off this feat by mining our resources, which means we are decreasing the amounts of resources available for future people. We are not only doing this with fossil fuels and other carbon sinks; we have been mining our water tables, ocean fisheries, mineral wealth, and other resources, and at increasing rates. That pattern of consumption has already overshot the carrying capacity of the earth and may lead to the collapse of populations through the lack of energy, water, and food for future generations, not to mention potential conflicts over such diminishing resources. This is how our present successes can lead to future failures.

The concept of overshooting the limits of a given environment is not just a scholarly speculation. Scientists have observed it in animal populations as well as in isolated human communities, like the historical Easter Islanders. Even at present, some third-world countries are already collapsing and more will likely follow. But rather than human extinction or some apocalyptic collapse of industrial civilization, we are more likely faced with lowered living standards and the rapid increase of our day-to-day difficulties. Climate change makes more environments fragile and marginal, and thus prone to more frequent problems.

Population: impacts

Our world population now stands at 7.7 billion people, and is projected to grow to almost 10 billion by 2050 and possibly to 11 billion by 2100. Most countries in the world have achieved relatively stable replacement populations, not counting immigration. Nations in Africa and southern Asia continue to grow however, and will account for most of the increase. Since those nations also hope to increase their development within the same time frame, they will have to encourage population control to do so, or else many of their gains will be eaten up by larger populations. This does not mean they need to institute draconian measures. Educating girls up to at least the secondary level is the most effective way to bring down birth rates.

But even those of us living in relatively stable, developed countries need to at least consider having fewer children. Since we have the greatest impact on climate change because of our affluence and technologies, the fewer the people, the smaller the impacts.

So we all can lessen the probability of future suffering by having fewer children. Smaller populations will be better able to cope with more limited resources. The decision to have children is most likely the biggest carbon footprint decision anyone ever makes.

[Alan V]

Affluence: individual actions

To deal adequately with the problem of climate change, we need to take ownership for our own small parts of the problem since we are all contributors. We can’t wait for the government to do it for us, which it likely can’t anyway. Half of all CO₂ emissions have come from 10% of the world’s population. That 10% includes us Americans, who are considerably wealthier than most people in the world. But the more we are contributors, the greater our wealth and therefore the more likely we will be able to apply some of that wealth to correcting the problem.

Taking responsibility and solving our problems is not a conservative or a liberal agenda, it’s a human agenda. Nevertheless, it’s up to the people who understand climate change to take the first steps, to show their neighbors what can be done and how to do it. And people already are facing the challenges in greater numbers, and inspiring others to do the same.

We all have our individual priorities and prior commitments. It’s completely understandable that some people would like to do more but lack the resources or haven’t yet gotten around to it. But merely getting excited about climate change doesn’t help, only real action does. Everyone can make action against climate change among their top priorities for the next 20 or 30 years. If we wait, it will be too late since the timing of our efforts is now critical.

In 2009, the citizens of Fargo, North Dakota and Moorhead, Minnesota spent $30 million dollars preparing for the foreseeable flooding of the Red River, and thus were able to prevent an estimated $2 billion dollars worth of damage. They were heroes worth emulating.

Affluence: green consumers

As consumers, we can vote with our money. We can prefer clean energy to dirty energy. Renewables could become a new status symbol for intelligence and moral integrity. In the next decade, solar and wind power, home improvements, and electrical cars should all be affordable for ordinary people, especially if economic gains are equably shared. In many cases, money saved through efficiency and conservation should allow money to be shifted to such purchases.

We need to change the foods we consume as well. Cows and sheep are ruminants that belch methane, and are an incentive for deforestation. Beef and dairy account for 65% of the greenhouse gases emitted by livestock, and beef has over 100 times the carbon footprint of soy for the same unit of protein. As many have already realized, we need to eat less beef and dairy, and eat more vegetables. Even our doctors usually tell us this.

Similarly, we can stop consuming palm oil products, which lead to deforestation. The rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia are being bulldozed and burned to make way for palm oil plantations. Palm oil is used extensively in food, cosmetics, cleaning products, and biofuels. Using palm oil-based biofuels to reduce fossil fuel consumption is wrong-headed because they have three times the climate impact of fossil fuels.

Together we can become the driving force for the changes we want. We can divest from fossil fuels and consider socially responsible investment alternatives. We can vote for candidates who are scientifically literate about climate change issues. Our leaders, who are so often obliged to moneyed interests, will follow our lead if we vote differently and spend our money differently.

[Alan V]

Affluence: conserving

Buying American products and food, when possible, will reduce fossil fuels burned in transporting such items from distant locations. For maximum effectiveness against climate change, we need our economies to transition from global to local again. We can also take local vacations, travel less, fly less, and try to live closer to work. We can invest in efficiency. Conservation is very important as a strategy to fight climate change because we need time to build up our renewable infrastructure. Efficiency is the easiest way to have the biggest impact because it’s cheap and fast. According to one estimate, efficiency by itself could represent 40% of our emissions reductions.

Affluence: reducing our carbon footprints

Any calculation of the carbon footprint of certain products needs to include the CO₂ emissions from extracting and processing materials, manufacturing, and transportation, as well as any emissions from actually using the product, like burning gasoline in a car. This is why footprint figures are always estimates. They are too difficult to figure exactly. This in turn means that we all have to go by certain fallible rules of thumb in reducing our own carbon footprints, some of which are listed below. Nevertheless, there are so many ways each of us can fight climate change that we can do something positive every day of our lives.
* Calculate your carbon footprint. Find out your problem areas.
* Reduce, reuse, and recycle. Avoid excessive packaging. Bottled water is over 1,000 times more carbon intensive than tap water, mostly from packaging and transportation. Recycle your packaging when possible. Recycling generally saves energy, including 95% for aluminum. Glass requires a lot of energy to create or even to recycle, and transporting it consumes a lot of energy because of its weight. In comparison, steel and aluminum are easy to recycle and lighter.
*Refurbish over building or buying new. Reduce letters, catalogs, newspapers, and junk mail. The average email has only 1/60 the carbon footprint of a letter. Also reduce garden waste, since landfills produce methane. It’s better to mulch than bag your yard and garden clippings.
* Also try to cut down on the use of energy-intensive materials, like steel, concrete, and precious metals. The carbon intensity of steel production varies with the country which produces it because of variations in energy used, efficiency, and transportation. China has 3 times the footprint as the U.S. when it comes to steel production, while India has 5 times.
* Eat what you buy. Americans waste about 1/4 of the food we buy, and most of the waste ends up in landfills where it can produce methane. Cheese has 13/17 the CO2e of beef, so going vegetarian won’t help much if you merely swap cheese for meat. Several companies are developing fake meats which are nearly as good as real. Go seasonal to avoid hothouses and air freight. Buying in-season and locally cuts 97% of the carbon footprint. Use lower-carbon cooking methods, like microwaves, whenever possible. Boiling water with the lid on saves energy.
* Keep your car well maintained, with tires fully inflated, and drive it at 60 rather than 70 MPH. When possible and safe, walk, bike, or use public transport.
* Gas is better than electricity for heating unless a renewable electricity source is used. Turn your thermostats down in the winter and up in the summer, and unplug standby devices when feasible. More people living in the same house and sharing resources can reduce the total carbon footprint of all.

[Alan V]

The World Economic Forum’s global risk report, released ahead of this week’s meeting, identified environmental challenges, including the failure to mitigate climate change, as top of the list of dangers facing the world economy. On Monday, broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough warned that 'the Garden of Eden is no more', and urged political and business leaders to make a renewed push to tackle climate change. 'We have changed the world so much that scientists claim we are in a new geological age, the anthropocene, the age of humans,' he said. 'What we do now, and in the next few years, will profoundly affect the next few thousand years,' added Attenborough, who received a Crystal award from the WEF for his work. Speaking to journalists after his speech, Attenborough warned that economic models needed to change. 'Growth is going to come to an end, either suddenly or in a controlled way.' "

https://www.theguardian.com/global-devel...r1BNYC13Eg

[Alan V]

"Australia is in the midst of an unrelenting, record-smashing heat wave that has left temperature maps so red the country looks like it’s on fire. The country has hit highs exceeding 120°F (49°C) during the day. And New South Wales set a new record for all of Australia last week when nighttime temperatures never fell below 96.6°F (35.9°C). The temperatures have been so brutal in South Australia, in fact, that heat-stressed bats are literally falling out of trees."

https://thinkprogress.org/australia-heat...6gwCIWpSUU

[Alan V]

Technology: decarbonizing

Decarbonizing our economy is largely about choosing one means over another for the same results. Different technologies and different methods can achieve the same ends in terms of quality of life with vastly different impacts on the environment, as per the examples listed below.

Technology: land use

We can protect ecosystems that sequester carbon, like peat bogs and wetlands. We can plant more trees and stop deforestation entirely. We can adopt eco-friendly farming methods such as no-till agriculture and rotation of crops, and even change our land-use practices to capture CO₂ in soils. Agricultural waste captured as charcoal, or “biochar,” can remain stable for thousands of years and will increase soil fertility. Some estimate that it should be possible to sequester an additional 300 or 400 billion tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere by such means.

Technology: transportation

Transportation is responsible for 23% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In the U.S., more than 25% of our CO₂ emissions come from moving ourselves or our goods. According to the EPA, the average American uses 557 gallons of gasoline a year. Each gallon emits 25 pounds of CO₂, when you include the energy spent on pumping, refining, and transporting it. Frequent fliers have some of the highest carbon footprints. Because those emissions enter the upper atmosphere, the impact is twice as much as the CO₂ by itself. And Americans are responsible for nearly half of the total worldwide CO₂ emissions from aircraft.

The internal combustion engine is only 17 to 20% energy-efficient, which means most of the fuel burned is wasted producing heat. In contrast, electric vehicles are much more energy-efficient, using 75 to 86% of energy for motion. So much of America’s CO₂ emissions come from transportation that a transition to electric vehicles will be a major component in our fight against climate change. And no fossil fuels need be burned if the electricity supplying them is clean. This will in turn require a network of fast chargers for long-distance travel. Improvements in charging stations for electrical vehicles could reduce charging times to less than 45 minutes. Battery costs should drop considerably in the 2020s, making electric cars cost competitive.

Mass transit uses scale to its emissions advantage. Trains, boats, and electric high speed rail are many times more energy efficient than either cars or airplanes. One company is developing small electrical airplanes for short-distance flights. Using telepresence can reduce the need for travel.

[Alan V]

Technology: limiting emissions

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that CO₂ must be regulated as a pollutant by the EPA, which sets regulation standards for vehicles and power plants. But greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced in other ways as well. Methane digester systems can process agricultural and human waste to produce fertilizer and biogas. Methane from landfills, agriculture, and waste management facilities can be captured for fuel. Burning methane has much less impact on the climate than letting it escape as emissions. Refrigerant emissions should be captured at the end of the life of the products which use them, such as air conditioners and refrigerators.

Technology: homes, buildings, and cities

Heat pumps, both ground-source and air-source, use 25 to 50% less electricity than conventional heating and cooling systems. They can supply heating, cooling, and hot water from one unit, and will help replace fossil fuel heating over time. However, they are not practical or effective for all circumstances, so they should be researched carefully.

Since electrical heating and electrical cars will require huge increases in electrical generation, we will need to ramp up our solar and wind capacities quickly. In the meantime, there are many simpler steps we can take. We can paint our attics to reflect radiant heat energy with radiation-barrier paints. We can weatherstrip and insulate our homes. We can use light-colored tiles on our roofs to reflect sunlight. We can install energy-efficient windows. We can line dry our clothes again, and wash them with cold water. We can install solar hot water systems, smart thermostats, and LED bulbs. LED lighting uses 90% less energy than incandescents, and 50% less than compact fluorescents, and without the mercury.

We can stay in the cities instead of spreading out in the country. We can build energy-efficient new buildings. We can retrofit old buildings for energy efficiency, and economically too, since they pay for themselves over time with energy savings. We can restore walkable cities and add bike lanes.

Technology: checklist

We need to change to less-impacting technologies within the next 20 to 30 years. To assist this effort, we can all create checklists of our goals, then prioritize them and start working on them from the top. Below are a few possible items to include on such lists:
* Upgrade the weatherstripping, insulation, and windows on the house for energy efficiency.
* Wrap hot water pipes with neoprene insulation.
* Drive a fuel-efficient car in the short run. Buy an electric car when it is affordable.
* Install solar panels for electricity and a solar hot water system, if affordable.
* Switch to a renewable energy supplier for electricity as soon as possible.
* Change oil- or gas-fueled appliances to electric once you switch to renewable electricity.
* Change appliances to energy-efficient models.

In many states, you can now choose an electricity supplier while your current power company continues to handle distribution, maintenance, and billing. Some of these suppliers offer renewable energy options. A renewable electricity supplier purchases an amount of clean energy equivalent to what you use. The terms of the agreements offered vary widely, as do the customer service records of the companies concerned, so do your research before making a commitment.

Changing to electrical appliances can be a major investment, since it will require installing special outlets and possibly require upgrading your circuit breaker box, electric meter, and incoming electrical supply to handle higher loads. Be sure to consult a qualified electrician and obtain all necessary local permits.

Since we are all a part of the problem, we all need to be a part of the solution as well. We have to buy new things as the old ones wear out all the time, and we continually try to improve our lives in small ways anyway. Now we can do our part to fight climate change at the same time.

[Alan V]

Section 9: How we can re-imagine our future

The old future and the new future

Back in the 1960s when I grew up, endless material progress seemed our likely future. The sky seemed the limit – as indeed it turned out to be, all too literally.

Our vision of the future has changed considerably in the last 50 years. Now the progress we need to make is to live within our environmental limits. Americans will still apply their work ethic, know-how, and inventiveness, but to new methods to reach the same goals of security, prosperity, and happiness. The new future will be sustainable. We will use renewable sources of electricity. Light vehicles will run on electricity, heavy vehicles on biofuels or other alternative fuels now in development. Our agriculture will be sustainable and will renew the earth rather than deplete it.

The Montreal Protocol

CFCs and HCFCs are man-made gases which were used for refrigerants. However, since they were reacting with and destroying the protective ozone layer, the Montreal Protocol agreement in 1987 replaced them with HFCs, and they are slowly declining in the atmosphere as a result. This success shows that such global agreements can work, when all participants understand their own self-interests. HFCs are also powerful greenhouse gases, so a new agreement called the Kigali Accord of 2016 is replacing HFCs with natural refrigerant substitutes. This should avoid an estimated 0.5̊C of additional warming.

The Paris Accord

The Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 was signed by 195 countries. Its goal was to keep total global warming below 2.0̊C (3.6̊F), and if possible below 1.5̊C (2.7̊F). This was to avoid the much higher risk of initiating natural positive feedback loops which would make global warming self-reinforcing. The Accord was not perfect. Airline industries succeeded in keeping aviation out of the agreement altogether. Further, the specific goals which various countries agreed to were insufficient to reach those goals, and would result in 3.4̊C of warming. Nevertheless, it was understood that countries would commit to more restrictive goals as they made progress toward them, just as they did with the Montreal Protocol.

After Donald Trump became president, he decided to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Accord. By the terms of the agreement, he can’t do this until just before the election in 2020. But even with this backwards move, the U.S. will still meet and possibly exceed the pledges that the Obama administration made in Paris. Even while we have passed no sweeping bills in Congress, the U.S. has led the world in reducing emissions due to efforts by states, cities, businesses, and citizens.

[Alan V]

Climate change progress

Brazil cut its deforestation of the Amazon by 80% in a decade. Primarily due to its efforts, worldwide deforestation has dropped to about half its previous rate. Brazil also now generates almost half of its energy from renewables.

Among the nations which are already switching to renewables, Germany is at 25%, Spain at 35%, and Portugal at 50%. Denmark gets 40% of its electricity from renewables, is shooting for 100% by 2035, and plans to ban the sale of new fossil-fueled cars in 2030.

In Germany, 65% of renewable power sources are owned by individuals, cooperatives, and communities who are decentralizing energy production. Citizens are taking the matter into their own hands, aided by a far-sighted, 20-year guaranteed premium price paid to anyone for renewable energy. Many people are willing to pay slightly more for their power to help deal with climate change.

France plans to be coal free by 2021. France and Britain plan to end the sale of gas and diesel cars by 2040. The European Union plans to have 35% clean vehicles by 2030 and to become carbon neutral by 2050.

Over three dozen countries have set a price for carbon, and support for a carbon tax is growing globally. A carbon tax seems much less radical now, since it would offer predictability to businesses, enabling them to plan efficiently. In 2014, seventy countries had feed-in tariffs to set a long-term purchase price for electricity produced by renewables. Many others mandate a percentage of renewables to encourage their adoption within a realistic time frame to combat climate change. There is a global covenant of mayors for climate and energy in 7000 cities in 12 countries. In 49 countries, emissions have already peaked. In another 8 countries, emissions will likely peak in the next decade or so.

In the U.S., 70% of all new energy-generating capacity comes from solar and wind power. The U.S., China, and India will account for two-thirds of global renewable expansion to 2022. General Motors and Ford plan to introduce a range of all-electric vehicles in the 2020s. China intends that one in five cars will run on alternative fuels by 2025, and plans to eventually do away with internal combustion cars altogether. China is the leading manufacturer of solar panels and a major supplier of wind turbines. India will sell only electric cars by 2030.

New York City has set the goal of reducing greenhouse gases 30% by 2030. The city is planning ahead to encourage trees, parks, bike lanes, mass transit, energy efficiency, clean air, and lower traffic congestion. New York State and California plan to cut their emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030, and 80% by 2050. By themselves, Californians have the 5th largest economy on the planet, and yet they are on track to accomplish these goals. The mayor of Los Angeles plans to make the city carbon neutral by 2050. Hawaii is committed to 100% clean energy. Many U.S. cities and 36 states have renewable energy goals or portfolios.

We can solve this

So millions of people worldwide are already working steadily on climate change problems, but they need our help. Not everyone can do everything, but everyone can do something. Then everyone can do something else, and so on. Each of us makes a difference to the total problem.

[Alan V]

Cultural change

Since we need to minimize our environmental impact rather than maximize it, this requires us to do less instead of more in many ways – to travel less, to consume less, to learn to do more with less, to be satisfied with less, and so on. We can tie progress to well-being rather than raw consumption, to measure our successes in new and more accurate ways. Our impacts on the natural world can become a part of our accounting, since as it is now we are losing ground rather than making real progress. Environmental problems are at base cultural ones.

In the short run, we can give up some of our superpowers. Americans are supported by the efforts of about 150 “energy slaves” per person, in the form of machines which presently run primarily on fossil fuels. More of us can embrace minimalism to face the challenges ahead. We didn’t intend to change the climate, but now that we know the facts, we can face them head on. Driving and flying are now in effect moral issues. In the end, if we don’t change quickly enough, we will have to figure out how to adapt to a badly damaged planet.

Our legacy

It would take tens of thousands of years to drop to preindustrial levels of CO₂ again by natural processes alone. So climate change will dominate world history for hundreds if not thousands of years to come, unless we can scale up technologies to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere.

So we need to make a massive shift from short-term to long-term thinking. This is one of those “all hands on deck” situations. However you ground your ethical system, almost no one would wish to damage the planet and hurt future generations. Our diverse human communities can learn to cooperate again to fight this common problem. We can achieve collective action if we face up to our individual responsibilities.

There is presently a very good chance that our generations, and especially wealthy people like Americans, will be viewed as the bad guys of history in the not-too-distant future. Climate change and environmental destruction will be our lasting legacy unless we clean up our act, and quickly. If we do prevent the worst of climate change, that will undoubtedly be our greatest legacy instead.

[Alan V]

Climate change is complicated. Since I wanted to understand it better, I read and took notes from over fifty books on various aspects of the subject. The above posts represented my summary of the major points from those books as well as from certain online sources of information. Since most of those points were repeated again and again across multiple books and websites, I have not included footnotes. Below is my list of some of the better sources of information, to give credit where credit is due.

Bibliography

Archer, David. The Long Thaw: How Humans are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.

Archer, David and Stefan Rahmstorf. The Climate Crisis: An Introductory Guide to Climate Change. Cambridge, Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Berners-Lee, Mike. How Bad are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything. Berkeley, CA: Greystone Books, 2011.

Brown, Lester R. and Janet Larsen, J. Matthew Roney, Emily E. Adams. The Great Transition: Shifting from Fossil Fuels to Solar and Wind Energy. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015.

Davidson, Osha Gray. Clean Break: The Story of Germany’s Energy Transformation and What Americans Can Learn from It. InsideClimate News, 2012.

Goodell, Jeff. The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2017.

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The End

[SYZ]

Thanks mate for taking the time to post this info.  It's made for very interesting—if time consuming!—reading.    

I live in the far south east of the mainland in the +1ºC zone.

[Alan V]

"In a pioneering move, a German government-appointed panel has recommended that Germany stop burning coal to generate electricity by 2038 at the latest, as part of efforts to curb climate change. The Coal Commission reached a deal early Saturday following months of wrangling that were closely watched by other coal-dependent countries. Germany gets more than a third of its electricity from burning coal, generating large amounts of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming."

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireSt...l-60657402

[Alan V]

"The fossil fuel, utilities and transportation sectors are known for speaking as little as possible on the subject of climate change impact– however, they sure will put their money where their mouth is when it comes to lobbying for climate change legislation. For the first time, a Drexel University researcher analyzed lobbying data, finding that these sectors out-lobbied environmental organizations and alternative energy corporations, both proponents of emissions regulation. A new study by Drexel environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle, PhD, shows that between 2000 and 2016, lobbyists spent more than two billion dollars on influencing relevant legislation in the US Congress. As the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive analysis ever conducted of climate lobbying data, Brulle’s research confirms the spending of environmental groups and the renewable energy sector was eclipsed by the spending of the electrical utilities, fossil fuel, and transportation sectors."

https://drexel.edu/now/archive/2018/July...CwWRQ8t6CM

[Alan V]

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump:
"In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!"
6:28 PM - 28 Jan 2019

My comment: Trump is so poorly informed about climate change that he doesn't even know that climate is average weather.

In contrast:

"The polar vortex is a prevailing wind pattern that circles the Arctic, flowing from west to east all the way around the Earth. It normally keeps extremely cold air bottled up toward the North Pole. Occasionally, though, the vortex weakens, allowing the cold air to pour down across Canada into the U.S., or down into other regions such Eastern Europe. In addition to bringing cold, the air mass can push the jet stream—the band of wind that typically flows from the Pacific Ocean across the U.S.—much further south as well. If the jet stream puts up a fight, the moisture it carries can fall out as heavy snow, which atmospheric scientists say is the circumstance that caused the February 2010 'snowmageddon' storm that shut down Washington, D.C."

"But why does the vortex weaken? Now it gets interesting. More and more Arctic sea ice is melting during summer months. The more ice that melts, the more the Arctic Ocean warms. The ocean radiates much of that excess heat back to the atmosphere in winter, which disrupts the polar vortex. Data taken over the past decade indicate that when a lot of Arctic sea ice disappears in the summer, the vortex has a tendency to weaken over the subsequent winter, if related atmospheric conditions prevail over the northern Atlantic Ocean."

From: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/obs...06846662=1

[Alan V]

"Overall, Earth is warming due to climate change, but areas near the North Pole are warming more than 2 times faster than the rest of the globe. This 'Arctic Amplification' is especially pronounced in winter. When warm air invades the Arctic Circle, it weakens the polar vortex, displacing cold air masses southward into Europe, Asia and the United States. You might think of it as a once tight-knit circulation unraveling, slinging pieces of cold air outward. Evidence for this was presented in a research paper published in the Journal of the American Meteorological Society. Essentially, it suggests climate change can contribute to a more extreme, wavy jet stream, hurling cold air masses farther south. It should be noted that this theory is relatively new and there is a lot of debate in the climate science community about the extent to which such a connection exists."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/polar-vorte...-_htLd_2FE