On the Climate Emergency

Lots of bleak news these days. The fires sweeping through Canada and the U.S. this year, at least, for the thinnest of silver linings in these devastating tragedies, have woken more people up to the reality of climate change. We need the U.S. on board on this, and that will only happen when they start to see the consequences out their living room windows. Richard Smith explains the solution to our current issues in New Politics,

"Scientists tell us we face a climate emergency . . . Suppressing emissions means closing down the producers of those emissions – the oil companies, auto manufacturers, power plants, chemical companies, construction companies, airlines, etc. . . . Corporations, typically limited to one line or field of production, like oil production for example, can’t be expected to provide new jobs in an entirely different field for displaced workers and have no mandate to do so. Society has do this. . . . This is the public conversation the whole nation and the whole world needs to be having right now." 

Yup. Except he says scientists have been warning us since the 80s, but we actually had a much longer timeline to get our shit together. Here's the Washington Post, page 2, from November 2, 1922:

And this one is from a New Zealand paper, dated August 14, 1912:

Yesterday, Craig Welch published an extensive overview of the effects on the permafrost in National Geographic:

"Arctic experts are weighing a troubling question: Could a thaw of permafrost begin decades sooner than many people expect in some of the Arctic's coldest, most carbon-rich regions, releasing trapped greenhouse gases that could accelerate human-caused climate change? . . . By the time some changes are detected, a significant transition may be underway, he says. That means the public and policymakers may not grasp the real risks. "Most models don't project major carbon releases until beyond 2100," Walter Anthony says. That may be the case. But it's also possible, she says, that they "could actually happen in my children's lifetime—or my own."

The data isn't 100% at this point or extensively collected, but,

"Even scientists uncomfortable with the limited data say the possibility that something so fundamental could change so quickly gives them pause. . . . When we see things happening that haven't happened in the lifetime of the scientists studying them, that should be a concern."

Meanwhile, in today's New York Times, Lisa Friedman reports on how new US policies will cost lives:

"The proposal, the Affordable Clean Energy rule, is a replacement for the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which was an aggressive effort to speed up the closures of coal-burning plants, one of the main producers of greenhouse gases, by setting national targets for cutting carbon dioxide emissions and encouraging utilities to use cleaner energy sources like wind and solar. The new proposal, issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, instead seeks to make minor on-site efficiency improvements at individual plants and will also let states relax pollution rules for power plants that need upgrades, keeping them active longer."

Well, we had a good run.