Assignment 16-Tag Howard

Totally didn’t forget we need to turn this in here too.

Take a moment. Picture the Earth in around twenty thousand BCE. No human structures, an unblemished landscape, and the temperature is on average about three degrees celsius cooler than during world war one (Hansen and Sato). Now this change is all-natural and took millennia. But can you guess how much the avergae temperature has increased in the last century alone? About one-degree celsius. If we do some quick math then for every one degree of temperature change in the post-industrial age it took over six and a half thousand years. Congratulations everybody! We did what nature took seven thousand years to do in just under a hundred. Now, of course, all of you have heard plenty about this topic before, but here’s the thing, I don’t care. Because what you have heard before is likely wrong, ineffective, futile, unfeasible, or some combination of the four. In reality, what we need is a combination of those proposals that you are already familiar with (so long as they don’t fall into the categories of ineffective or wrong).

    Now, first of all, when it comes to preventing climate change, we don’t. Its already happening, too bad.

    To a handful of you, this may come as a surprise, but we already see changing tides, more pronounced dry seasons (and wet seasons),  bigger badder storms, and a sharp uptick in wildfires (Shaftel and Callery). All we can do now is try to mitigate the causes and the symptoms. Here it is that we get into the real meat and potatoes of the climate-crisis. Not if climate change exists or when we will see its effects, we know the answer to both of those questions, even if some may not like them. The true question is what tools are best to use to address this crisis. 

    The first and most important tool in humanity’s hands is multilateralism, climate change is a global problem and requires a global solution, the Paris Agreement enshrined these principles well, but arguably fell short of what will be required of humanity in the coming decades. The UN has, however, been a fairly effective amplifier for climate activism, with Ethiopia and US governors alike protesting the current administration’s stance on climate policy (Saed 2). But the current level of multilateralism is far from effective and after the Trump administration pulled the US out of the Paris agreement, the flaw in international agreements became clear. They are nonbinding agreements whose implementation can change from leader to leader. In addition, the UN acts in vague but wide strokes, without providing actual mechanisms to implement the proposed cuts to carbon production. The reasoning here is simple, nations have different needs and the UN can’t dictate how each nation should go about making the needed changes. But this means that the proper place for international agreements is in goal setting, not actually making progress on the issue. So, for the remainder of this speech, seeing how that flag is star-spangled, I’ll focus on the United States.

    And speaking of specification it’s probably a good idea that I now move on to more specific ways to address global warming than the vague concept of multilateralism. 

Renewable energy is when it comes to actually making changes, inarguably the primary way to deal with climate change. No matter what other solutions we look at energy will always be vital to 21st-century humanity, and without renewables that energy will come from fossil fuels that fill the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses. Solar, wind, and hydroelectric are well-established and effective ways of generating energy; each has its own respective caveats, but one burdens them all: price. Converting a century-old infrastructure entirely to new forms of power generation is not cheap and spending money on infrastructure, especially what can be passed off as non-essential in the short term has never been government’s strong suit. Individually though more problems abound, solar only works during the day and therefore needs huge battery arrays to fill the gaps, further increasing the price and space requirements. Hydroelectric and wind both share something in common with real estate, “location, location, location”. Hydroelectric is obviously useless without flowing water and wind turbines need wide-open spaces with plenty of, you know, wind. But all of these problems can be solved quite simply, combine them. Use each solution in the environment best suited for it and import energy where you can’t produce it renewably, in the long term at least. 

But then one must consider the other big consumer of fossil fuels, cars (McGrath 24). The combustion engine is the number two source of human greenhouse gas emissions and has been around since the late 18th century. But recently the electric car has come around as a potential replacement and has made headway in the global markets with pushes for banning gasoline-fueled cars outright becoming less and less fringe. But electric cars still don’t beat the market share or price of conventional vehicles and it seems that it will stay that way for the next decade or so. Therefore, when it comes to transportation the most that can reasonably be done is to lessen the emissions of current vehicles whilst also promoting all-electrics. Now, some say that heightening standards for either energy or vehicle emissions is detrimental to the economy, but the very companies that they claim to be protecting advocate for these standards (Krupp), making that argument entirely fallacious.

When looking at the issue holistically it can be understood why so little progress has been made, the logistical and political difficulties combined with immense cost make dealing with climate change expensive and difficult. But that doesn’t make it any less necessary. The money exists to pay for a reform of the US grid, and systems are in place to expand our renewable capabilities. No, what is lacking is a will to what must be done. That is why it is the job of the people to hold our leaders to task. To paraphrase Kennedy, we choose to preserve the environment not because it is easy, but because it is hard, because that challenge is one that we are obliged to accept, one we are unable to postpone any longer. And therefore I beg of you, remember the future.

Works Cited

“Climate Change Evidence: How Do We Know?” Edited by Holly Shaftel and Susan Callery, NASA, NASA, 9 July 2019, climate.nasa.gov/evidence/.

EPA-EFE. “Demonstration on Climate Change, in Brussels, Belgium.” The Straits Times, Brussels, 3 Dec. 2018, www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/thousands-of-belgians-march-against-global-warming.

Krisberg, Kim. “Scientists: 2016 Was Hottest Year Ever Recorded.” Nation's Health, Oct. 2017, pp. 11–11. KYVL, search-ebscohost-com.proxy.kyvl.org/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,uid,cpid,url&custid=s1176192&db=a9h&AN=125529742.

Krupp, Fred. “Opinion | Car Companies Want Stricter Emissions Standards. What's the Problem?” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 9 Sept. 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/car-companies-want-stricter-emissions-standards-whats-the-problem-11568068636.

McGrath, Matt. “Climate Change: Current Warming 'Unparalleled' in 2,000 Years.” BBC News, BBC, 24 July 2019, www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49086783.

SHABAZZ, SAEED. “US Activists Turn to UN in Fight against Trump in Climate Change Debate.” THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS, 30 Mar. 2017, pp. 2–2. KYVL, http://amsterdamnews.com/news/2017/mar/30/us-activists-turn-un-fight-against-trump-climate-c/

Hansen, James E, and Makiko Sato. “NASA GISS: Science Briefs: Earth's Climate History: Implications for Tomorrow.” NASA, US Government, July 2011, https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_15/.