2023-07-31 22:16:05
We have entered a fierce new phase of global warming and the worst is yet to come. Biden has to declare the climate emergency.
I am terrified of what is being done to our planet and I am also fighting to stop it. You too should be afraid and at the same time take the strongest measures you can. There has never been a summer like this in history: terrifying heat in the oceans, deadly heat on land, an unprecedented level of fire and smoke, and sea ice melting faster than we have ever seen or thought possible.
I have feared this profound collapse of the Earth for almost twenty years and, like many of my colleagues, I have tried to warn you. I’ve tried with all my might, but it’s already between us. And mark my words: this has only just begun. Something much, much worse is on the way as long as we continue to burn fossil fuels.
It gives me no satisfaction to know that this was also shown to be true with a certainty as non-negotiable and ruthless as the physics that explains global warming caused by fossil fuels. Instead, what I feel is anger towards those in power and endless sorrow for everything I love.
We are losing the Earth right under our noses. The Amazon rainforest may already have passed the tipping point. Coral reefs as we know them will be gone from our planet by mid-century and even much sooner due to rising sea surface temperatures. They are losses of cosmic dimensions. As a father, I feel sorry for my children.
Fossil fuels are doing this damage. Therefore, the only way out of this heat nightmare is to end them. The situation is not going to change by planting trees, or recycling, or offsetting emissions, or with the illusory capture of carbon. The more time we give the fossil fuel industry, the more irreversible damage the people who profit from it will knowingly continue to do to the Earth.
We are headed for heat waves caused by fossil fuels that will kill more than a million people in a single episode. And it won’t stop there: more fossil fuels will mean more heat and more death. The only way out is to end fossil fuels.
Biden’s reluctance to declare a climate emergency and his eagerness to push for new drilling and pipelines at an even faster rate than Trump goes against science, common sense and life on Earth. I suppose this planet-destroying choice has all sorts of reasons and rationalizations in politics that we’re used to, with its short-term goals and “easier to follow than to lead” strategy. But as a scientist it seems to me an ignorant and myopic calculation. It is clearly a way of denying climate change. And I have no doubt that in the future we will consider the executives of fossil fuel companies, their lobbyists and those who chose to help them as criminals.
The stakes could not be higher. Every particle of fossil fuel that is sold and burned turns into carbon dioxide, warming the planet. Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for a long time. Thus, excess heat and other climate impacts are essentially irreversible on the human time scale. However small, each increase in heat makes weather disasters more likely, intense, and widespread.
Every minute of the existence of the fossil fuel industry, every hydrocarbon drilling permit, every plane flight, every quart of gasoline, every fossil fuel advertisement, and every lobbying email sends us further into the irreversible catastrophe, physical and social, of heat.
Floods, fires, heat waves and crop failures will put ever greater pressure on all the systems of our society: insurance, buildings, infrastructure, food, water, energy, geopolitics, everything… Until in At some point those systems will inevitably break down. No place is safe.
Biden could stop issuing drilling permits on federal lands and waters, block construction of new pipelines, and effectively ban fracking technology with executive orders and federal agency regulations that would allow him to sidestep a failed Congress.
Biden could launch a landmark education program to counter fossil fuel industry misinformation, leverage its visibility to raise awareness and build support. It could ban government funding of fossil fuel infrastructure in other countries, end the Department of Energy’s fossil fuel funding programs, stop new fossil fuel cars from being sold since 2030, go after fossil fuel polluters for their violations, pledging to veto laws that give such criminals immunity, and much more.
Declaring a climate emergency would give him additional powers, such as banning oil exports and accelerating the construction of renewable energy on a scale not seen since the mobilization for World War II.
It would be a sure signal to investors who are still living in the past, to universities that have been embarrassingly slow to divest themselves of fossil fuel funds, to the media that has yet to see the big picture, and to all institutions dangerously lagging behind in our society. And it would be a victory that climate activists desperately need.
Biden has been the last president with a chance to keep the world below a 1.5 degree rise in temperature. Unfortunately, he’s almost certainly squandered that opportunity. But he can still turn around and prevent further damage, rather than being responsible for causing it. Will he? Or will he continue to defend oil executives and their pipelines?
The planet desperately needs leadership with vision. The planet desperately needs a policy that will lead us to an equitable transition away from fossil fuels and into climate emergency mode as a society.
I don’t give up and I never plan to. I owe it to my children, to all the good people who don’t deserve this and to all of life in this gift that is our planet. As much as we have lost, it will never be too late to fight.
Peter Kalmus es climátologo y autor del libro ‘Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution’ [Encarnar el cambio: vivir bien e iniciar la revolución climática].
Translated by Francisco de Zárate.
#climate #emergency #warned #years