I'd rather compare solving the climate crisis with the mobilization that the U.S. had to do to win W.W.2.
10
Maybe the world can do something about it, but don't expect the United States to lead, as long as Republicans have any say in it. They have gone off a cliff.
Since the 1965 Voting Rights Act that attempted to eliminate American citizens being deprived of their lawful right to vote, the bill has been reauthorized and amended with bipartisan cooperation in 1970, 1975, 1982, 1992, and the last time in 2006, signed by President George W. Bush. Last week, the House of Representatives voted for reauthorization and received only one Republican vote. One can assume he'll be driven out of office soon.
Climate change will kill and displace millions. Just another happy day for Republicans.
11
Solve is not the right word. We can mitigate the effects of climate change if we act decisively & quickly.
12
I'm a tree. I need CO2. It's food for me. Without CO2, I can't grow and ... very important ... I can't make all that O2 that you humans need. So please don't take all the CO2 away. You wouldn't like it if I stopped making oxygen for you, would you?
3
Sounds like pie in the sky to me. Many experts think it's too late now to reverse all the bad things happening.
1
For the ozone hole, the goal was clear. Reduce the size of the ozone hole.
For climate change, not so. Take for instance California. Climate change is always illustrated by fires in California. But what is the goal of stopping climate change there? Nobody talks about any concrete climatic goal.
A few years ago, California was in drought. It had devastating fires.
This year, California was very wet. Lots of vegetation growth. It had devastating fires.
California has old trees, in which one can see old droughts. Which used to last 200 years. The recent one lasted 5 years.
So climate is now much less extreme.
It always had fires, but two hundred years ago there were no houses to burn.
So the goal of stopping climate change is what? More water like this year? Less water like a few years ago? Tropical rains year round, like in the equatorial jungle? Monsoons?
People are hard to mobilize into paying $30 trillion, which comes to $1 million per family reading the NYT, without a clear goal.
2
This opinion article belongs in the tired and recurrent category of 'if we can put a man on the moon' or 'win WWII' we can solve climate change. How about this problem is more difficult than putting a man on the moon (which was in fact easy, requiring no shared sacrifices whatsoever other than throwing money at it) WWII and the Manhattan project - combined.
3
Just not a reasonable comparison. CFCs were not "vital" and could be replaced with an alternative that was equal to the task. Plus CFCs were a comparatively small segment of the industrial world.
Everything that happens on the planet needs energy and fossil fuels are ~85% of that equation. There is no resource on the planet that will provide needed energy that is as energy dense, easy to transport and cheap as fossil fuels.
3
We have a choice, economy or environment, we can't have "both", the economy is based on the exploitation of nature or the environment!! there is less than 2 years to act, if it isn't already too late!
1
In the case of climate change, "solve" is an inappropriate word. Ion the case of the ozone issue, "we" were still capable of coming together early on while it was early enough to "solve" the ozone problem. It is likely that he "we" waited a couple of decades to address the deteriorating ozone layer, we wold very like now have two existential problems to deal with. Climate change at this juncture is almost certainly not solvable. But, there is still time to address it by lessening the problem and by addressing the inevitable consequences. Let's face it: many cities, including Miami and New Orleans are future divers' paradises.
3
Here's the thing about a solution to climate change: there's an obvious solution, one that could be engineered literally in a few years.
But ironically corporations and governments don't want to pay for it. The solution is hydrogen.
Our world if full of it, literally, Turn on the tap in your kitchen and it comes out: two parts hydrogen, one part water. Nearly 3 / 4 of Earth's surface is covered with oceans and seas of H2O.
But it isn't a fuel in water form, it's a store of energy. There's a price for extracting it and that price makes it more expensive than petroleum and other direct sources of energy.
And yet, again ironically, we are willing to risk paying a more ultimate cost of continuing our petroleum and coal reliance, that cost being a very real slow death of our atmosphere.
So, yes, hydrogen is more costly directly to extract than any other source of energy.
The real question is, though, can we afford to NOT pay that price?
5
When there's less ozone, more ultraviolet gets through. It hits the oxygen in the lower atmosphere and makes ozone. So the problem fixed itself in short order once the CFCs stopped being added. CO2 takes a lot longer. The feedback mechanism here is that a warmer planet has more plants to take up the CO2. In theory. And CFCs were a relatively niche and new technology compared to fire.
1
These two atmospheric problems are nothing alike. Solving the ozone depletion problem was limited to a relatively small class of chemicals for which there were and continue to be alternatives with lower ODP and GDP. I participated in the conversion and development from the original refrigerants to the first and now second generation of refrigerants and blowing agents.
Climate change is driven largely by combustion for electricity generation heating and transportation, with the release of CO2. Other chemicals contribute as well but fundamentally this is about the use of combustion to gives us electricity heating transportation and all the other trappings of modern standards of living. Technical solutions for some sectors exist, but by and large are uneconomical. Without policies that recognize the deleterious effects of CO2, rapid implementation of these alternatives will not take place. Our entire society is built on this infrastructure. Turning it and doing it well can’t happen on a dime. However currently governments will not enact meaningful polices. Beware sharp curve ahead!!!
5
As an educator I have long used the example of the global success in reducing ozone depletion as a case for hope in terms of climate change. So I like this article. That said, reducing ozone depletion was a much simpler and smaller challenge. There were one set of chemicals (CFCs and relatives), used primarily for one application, that could be replaced relatively cheaply and quickly (despite the anguished squeals from industry at the time). And there was a world leader, Margaret Thatcher (I know, I didn't like her either) who as a chemist understood the problem and who led countries towards a rapid international response. Climate change is a much bigger issue, and the struggle is going to be like stopping a rhino as compared to mouse. That said, at least we have one model of world-wide cooperation, and I am glad the author reminds us of it.
3
Depends on what people choose to do. If more activists became active in technological change (more people studying physics and engineering for example), we could innovate our way toward it. If more activists became versed in environmental policy instead of banging their heads against the sky, we could advance on that front (and considerable research shows we have enough tools to stop climate change by simply deploying quickly and massively our current renewable technology).
1
The elephant in the room is geo-engineering, which seems to be off the table. We have the means to change the albedo of the planet with today's technology, yet, because it would only be a stopgap, it is barely discussed. Purists have made perfect the enemy of good. Like a good doctor, we need to first stabilize the patient then fix the underlying condition.
2
@Rich
We actually have been geo-engineering (unintentionally) since the beginning of the industrial era. The problem with intentional geo-engineering is that, as climate change accelerates in unpredictable directions, there will be a tendency to panic and employ techniques that are not well thought out, that may interact with other techniques in unanticipated ways, and that will (of course) come with unintended consequences.
The best source for both current climate data and a lot of information on geo-engineering, all collected in one place, is this admittedly alarmist site :
arctic-news.blogspot.com
Interior Alaska is about thirty degrees above normal so far this winter, and it's been raining in Anchorage for weeks now. Weather on the Kenai Peninsula is more like the weather in the Pacific Northwest fifty years ago, and Southwest Alaska is changing more rapidly and drastically than any of the above areas. We are already far past where most people think in terms of climate change !
5
The excess carbon gases are from burning hydrocarbons released by chemical reactions or from sequestered gases in the ground. Restoring green house gases to solid states or sequestered are plausible alternates but not particularly good ones.
Solid pollutants in the high atmosphere which produce global cooling have been measured for many decades. Sulphur is very effective and naturally occurring, as is the acid rain that it produces.
Air buried in the ground can leak and CO2 alters the ph of waters where living things often cannot tolerate those changes.
1
It takes decades for nature to restore green house gases to solid states and out of the atmosphere. Whether it’s 15 percent or 60 percent of the gases released, it’s increasing the concentration that will affect all of us. This idea that we are hurting ourselves by reducing our contribution is self destructive unless all others stop as well reveals a failure to understand natural processes and a narrow focus upon balance sheet views that ignore everything not posted as a debit or a credit in account books.
1
My City of Aurora, Colorado, approved last June the addition of 348 gas wells to be fracked within the city limits. These are to be added to the already 100 gas wells in operation. Within the last few days, reports have claimed unparalleled amounts of drilling in Texas and New Mexico as the U.S. becomes the largest producer in the world. The ozone problem seems to be a drop in the bucket in comparison.
Since the governing bodies of the world are not sufficiently responding, it seems the earth's populace needs to form its own worldwide organization to move forward with action.
4
@fishergal
If you paid attention to Fiona Hill's testimony (at about hour 4.5), one of the subtexts was her advocacy for taking Russia down economically by shipping natural gas fracked in the US to Russia's border countries. That is one of the reasons there is so much fracking happening in the US right now. It makes zero sense at a global level, and it's downright scary to realize that so many 'environmentally conscious' liberals are in total favor of that policy as a way of 'defeating Russia'.
1
As long as the GOP remains in power any discussion of climate change is meaningless. What's the point of talking about possible solutions when there is no chance of enacting them? The major factor driving climate destruction right now isn't CO2, it's the GOP.
4
The two problems are too different to be comparable. First big difference. Fixing the ozone hole turned out to be easy and cheap. There were easily substituted refrigerants that do not contain chlorine. The chemical companies switched products and went on doing their normal business.
In the case of fossil fuels it is very different. The change to alternatives will put the fossil fuel industries out of business. Their reserves must be left in the ground wiping out their wealth and power. Their owners and senior management realizing that the solution would require an end to fossil fuel use, a requirement that they knew would put them out of business, faced losing their wealth and power. Their response was to initiate a large very well-funded extensive conspiracy to delay and prevent action. They decided to wage a campaign of casting doubt on the science to delay action as long as possible. The conspirators have spent hundreds of millions to fund and publicize fake scientific studies and they provide hundreds of millions in political contributions to their owned politicians. It has worked. Now millions of people believe that climate change is a hoax designed to politically subjugate and impoverish them. Now we have Fox News operating as the GOP propaganda system and actively working as part of the conspiracy of doubt. Making it even worse the GOP has adopted denial of modern science as a campaign strategy, supported by tens of millions of people who now reject modern science.
5
Existence of human life means carbon footprint, there is no other way to put it, thus far. Most of the population on the planet has been responsible for destruction of all else without regard to other life, land, trees and ultimately the climate. Good thing is that now a lot more people are aware because a lot more people are being affected.
Is there a solution? I think there are multiple solutions, starting with one industry at a time. If we start with grocery -- all the containers should be changed to standardized reusable containers, collected and reused, cutting down the one time use and discard approach - saving energy. That would be a good start.
Second thing would be to have a billonaires such as Bezos family finance a prototype of compact/modern green dwelling with smaller house size and smaller carbon footprint but enough room for everyone. If something like this is successful, we can return a good amount of land back to nature, allowing other species to thrive, and help in climate change. Difficult but doable.
A lot more can be done.
4
Ozone was a much easier problem to solve. One can grow one's GDP with 20th century technology without hurting the ozone layer. The same is not true of preventing climate change.
That said, we can only address climate change with international agreements combined with individual/cultural efforts to exceed those requirements. Those that complain that the Paris agreement does not go far enough are correct, but this does not mean that it can go any further than it does or that international cooperation is not essential to prevent future damage.
It is much better to have nations commit to modest improvements, meet them and hold others to account for failing to meet them than to make bold promises that most countries cheerlead for but cheat on. It is such PR-driven policy that led to the WV diesel scandal even though everyone knew dense levels of diesel exhaust killed people. Poor countries likely have even less tolerance to trade away economic gains for environmental concerns. The Paris agreement is central to the solution, but rich countries need to exceed those goals. This is how the whole world can stay committed to solutions without settling for only token efforts in the largest economies.
2
One of the problems dealing with global warming is it is political. Liberals want a multi-trillion dollar climate warming Marshall Plan and conservatives, with some justification, see it as a back door for liberals to control everything. Be open to conservative ideas to address carbon. Let capitalism attack the problem. Ironically, Tesla is now at an economic disadvantage for selling a lot of electric vehicles because the federal subsidy has ended. If the intention is to get petrol cars off the road, make the electric subsidy the same for every manufacture, regardless of the number of units. Phase it out slowly for every manufacture at the same time as sales build. Capitalists want to make a profit so offer incentives to produce less carbon. Yes, the much maligned capitalistic system can save the planet. Make it profitable to reduce carbon.
6
It's always been possible. We have the science. The solutions are here. What's not here is a commitment to do so from big business and our politicians. With much of our right wing media not being held accountable for pushing Fossil Fuel Interests and Climate Denial people are being bamboozled and conned. We eventually won over the Tobacco Industry's disinformation campaign but we've yet to address the Fossil Fuel Climate Denial Campaign.
2
@Alph Williams Yes and no. Politicians cannot prevent us from installing on demand hot water heaters. Only we can prevent ourselves from doing that.
2
@John Patt True. However it's gong to take far more than some of us becoming energy efficient and independent. In Australia at the moment we are enduring massive bushfires, and while we have small population and don't produce that much emission we export more than a 4th of the world's coal and most of the Liquified Natural Gas...which has a huge impact on climate. Believe me Coal and LNG will not quit production on their own. Governments must make a stand and people must demand it and business needs to step up as well. This deregulation nonsense has helped no one but billionaires.
3
Ozone was easy. There wasn't an international market in ozone. Carbon is a wicked problem.
1
Wishful thinking. Ozone and CO2 are orders of magnitude different levels of difficulty, many orders.
Ozone was depleted by a few very specific specialized gases that could be replaced.
Climate is affected by the way we live, by everything we do. Changing it requires re-inventing society and industry.
There was time to fix ozone.
Yes, we will have to do those things to survive, but it is too late to "fix" climate. It is too late to stop global warming, it has happened and is happening. Even the Paris goal was set too high, and we've given up on meeting that.
Climate is now going to change. It already has changed in many ways and places. We have to cope with that.
We still need to limit climate change, but we no longer have the option to avoid it.
It is fantasy to imagine the climate changes will be gradual and happen to somebody else, and we can still just "fix" it with a few things done by the other guy.
2
During the first and second world wars America mobilized its industries and people against an existential threat. We have overused the "war on ..." meme much to often, but climate change doesn't require a war effort, what does?
Mobilize industry to make, not bombers or tanks, but solar arrays for every home. Builds windmills, not battleships. Build and distribute electric cars to everyone over the next ten years (300,000 cars at $30,000 is only one trillion dollars. The size of the increase in the deficit from the last tax reduction)
5
Massive electrification of vehicles as well as HVAC, etc, can only be accomplished by massive investment in nuclear power. Renewables won't cut it. Mankind must accept the hopefully controllable risks associated with nuclear plants and waste, rather than the catastrophic outcome of its use of fossil fuels.
3
CFCs were first synthesized in the 1890s. When the ozone depletion was first noticed, millions — perhaps the majority of Americans — could remember a time before aerosol deodorants, spray paints, hair sprays; non-evaporative air conditioners were still only decades old; and ice boxes were still something people could recall. But use of carbon — whether in petroleum, coal, or wood, or the raising of livestock, or any of the other areas of our economy — was part of human activity for millennia. It penetrates every part of our economy. And for much of it, there is no alternative that would scale up, even had we started in the 1990s, to achieve the same level of development that fossil fuel has afforded. It’s naive to suggest that because we solved the depletion of ozone, we will do the same for CO2.
3
How can you solve a problem, that requires everyone to be involved in the solution, when a vast minority of people don't believe it even exists? The answer is - you can't. The reality is that NOTHING significant will be done about climate change until the GOP is voted out of power en masse.
5
I used to be able to play golf in Las Vegas on New Year's Day because generally the sun was shining.
The last 3 to 4 years each fall winter spring sees cloud cover unseen in the region in thousands of years. It's cold in Vegas in the winter when there's no sun. My brother has a house in the Bahamas. His house was spared while the rest of his Abaco Island was totally devasted just like Puerto Rico, Mozambique, the Phillipines were severely impacted.
Paint a rosy picture all you want. The storms we see crossing America each year look more and more like giant hurricanes.
Food production will be severely effected worldwide just like it is along the equator well before the end of this century. Billions of hungry people. It's too late. Sorry.
3
Indeed, science which often creates the problem, whether fossil fuels, ozone depletion, chemical pollutants and currently global warming CO2 emissions, can also often create solutions. Knowing origins is as important as creating efficacious outcomes when the initial salvation turns into a pox. Big business is not the boogeyman; human progress is. The same is true with electric fleets, seen naively as panacea while in fact it is soon another toxic battery disposal and mining disaster matching CFC to HCFC as dual problems.
Historically, science is both culprit and savior, but to deify climatologists and suspect science aka political solutions is absurdity squared. The media is welcome to ring the alarm bell, but it needs to get out of the way of genuine progress regardless of political merits and better comprehend the rollercoaster of science and invention.
2
There is a way of decarbonizing our energy supply and not having to give up our life style: nuclear energy! It's needed in addition to wind and solar power in order to stabilize the elctric grid for safe and continuous electricita supply. What US should do is start a Manhatten-Project like effort to increase quickly the nuclear power station fleet, eventually with NuScale-type SMReactors.
2
NYT could do the world a great service by covering key challenges of CC with a more realistic approach. We all wish to have energy that, like the sun and wind, seem cost-free from the source and appear to have no major externalities that cannot be costly in the long run, as is now projected-some say speculated-to be the case with FF. The truth, however, is that there are major initial, short-term and long-term costs and externalities with wind and solar as well and NYT is not doing us a service by ignoring them for expediency in its understandable cheerleading for renewables.
The major initial cost is intermittency, which requires either (i) storage, which if it can be developed at scale, has its own short-term costs and long-term externalities in the battery supply-chain clean-up to come; or (ii) continued use of standby FF capacity as back-up power. The major long-term cost is the environmental cleanup to come in the supply chain for the component materials for wind turbines and blades, solar cells and any known storage solution.
Contrary to the assertions of the industry, renewables in actual use (not capacity) are not competitive with FF, whether just the initial costs or externalites are considered. Therefore, we must all give more attention to the risks inherent in the clamour to jump too quickly from FF into the dystopic future without them blithely urged on us by scientists overstating the evidence against FF or itinerent teenagers.
1
No it can’t.
2
News flash....This isn't the "Ozone problem" This is a problem that has totally gotten away from us and to put it in such simple terms is ridiculous.
The world's response so far? 2019 was the worst year for carbon pollution of the atmosphere ever.
It's too late to stop the coming chaos. Humans are incapable of addressing it in time. Trying to simplify it like you just did is lazy and a disservice to everyone.
1
Only a fool thinks what worked in the past will work now. We simply are no longer the same people and our rotten politicians wouldn't allow a fix anyway. Sad.
1
Money is god. You cannot defeat god.
3
@gene But the Almighty Dollar is an impersonal god. So harness his efforts!
1
The paucity of comments speaks volumes. People aren’t interested.
1
The ozone problem is back, CFC usage is on the rise. Claiming the problem is solved is ignorant.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02109-2
1
Pfft. Okay, boomers.
@Wow OK Millenials. Before your stereotype an entire generations and before you've had to deal with life, make sure that you use a towel more than once before throwing it in the laundry. The same with a pair of jeans. And you if don't understand why, do your homework instead of just leveling criticism.
5
All true enough, but we’re at such a perilous late stage now that we need emergency measures to buy us some time in which to achieve some of the massive and technologically ambitious solutions alluded to in this editorial. We’re on the brink of triggering knock-on effects, such as permafrost melt, that must be avoided if we’re to avoid irreversible catastrophe.
So we must use geoengineering as a stopgap. This might include distributing aerosol dust in the upper atmosphere, for example, to cool the planet as volcanic eruptions have done. There really is no choice at this stage.
2
Driving the population down to 1 billion vegans that ride bicycles as their exclusive means of transportation by 2100 is about the scale needed to solve this problem.
8
A minor point but why is it `Bill Clinton and Mr. Gore? Why not President Clinton and VP Gore? Or why not simply Clinton/Gore?
1
I wish I could be here to read the 2050 NYT edition. I sort of think commentators will be saying we told you in 2019 and you did nothing.
4
Politics were so very different in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Our politicians were men who took charge, who could think critically, understand implications and consequences, understand morality, the distinction between right and wrong, and made and fought for decisions for the betterment of this country. Look at us now. We have found, through our scientists, that we are facing an extreme crisis because of how we live. We have to change our politicians immediately if we want any type of relief. We need serious, smart, educated and passionate people to take up this issue and fight for solutions. We have to make it extremely clear that we as a country will not allow any more backwards ideologies and ideologues to have any standing at all in our government. We must tackle this issue with everything we've got. And now. No more pandering to the idiot right.
2
Suggestion to NY Times editorial board:
Instead of relying on sources like the NRDC for ideas ad analysis (and embarrassingly false analogies), why not reach out across the Hudson River to talk with Naomi Klein, who is now at Rutgers? She gets it.
NRDC has traditionally been a leader in science and beltway law, but the only major green worse than NRDC on climate is the capitalist tool EDF.
1
The NYT's could provide a "climate barometer" by auditing all of the "news" against a "Carbon" criteria... One simple version being: Does the published story/article/report illustrate a way to increase CO2 or decrease CO2? Surely the news experts could create a better set of criteria but you get the point... look in the mirror.
that's 59 years ago. that's before fake news. Now, we no longer trust scientists but we put our trust in ignorant strongman.
3
We can feed everyone in the world too. What is the chance of that happening?
2
The reason I am so cynical is: have you seen the size of America cars and homes? Americans are gluttonous and they could care less. So what exactly are you talking about? Caring or some 'socialist' idea? lol.
3
Great.
You want to help further, Dear “Editorial Board?”
Endorse Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren for President and VP (i don’t care about the order). It is a good start.
6
As the alarm over the warming of the earth increases, eventually there will be a focus on stratospheric sulfur injection to increase the scattering of incoming solar radiation. It is a planet-wide, inexpensive, simple solution to an otherwise impossible political and economic problem.
You can read about it here:
https://www.britannica.com/science/geoengineering#ref1115946
1
Change is hard and Americans do not want to sacrifice. You can see it clearly on the pages of the NYT. If the Ed Board really believes that Climate Change is so serious, it should take the NYT to task and tell it to stop glamorizing meat. Stop raving about recipes or restaurants that cater to meat, dairy, and eggs. You can't glorify these foods and still be serious about climate change.
6
Oh for heavens sake folks get a grip on yourselves. This is like Pearl Harbor: It just happened. It's real. No time for whining. No help in scapegoating. Stand up and join the fight. This is the UNITED States.
2
Mother Nature doesn't care whether we live or die, and the planet will flourish without us. In fact, she's much better off without our capitalist, predatory, disgusting greed.
Look at the comments here. Those of us who ARE conscious of the fragility of human life on the planet are far outweighed by the commenters who seem gleeful about climate change. It's as if they can't wait to see their children and grandchildren die for their cause of SACRED $$$. That'll show those dirty liberals, won't it?
Earth-lovers, we and our children do not matter to these people. All they care about is causing maximum suffering among "the others" , and wallowing in their filthy lucre.
1
Not to fear, Jane Fonda is now protesting, so critical mass will be here before you know it. Seriously Op-Ed board, now is different? Maybe you should read your own news. Saudi Aramco will be the largest IPO in history and by your own account Trump will circle the wagon around the Saudis every chance he gets. Just remember 666 Park Ave as you proclaim the light has finally arrived.
2
This editorial is just cheer-leading happy talk, without a single real solution. Replacing ozone-destroying industrial gases was simple compared to replacing the world's entire fossil-fuel based economy in time to avoid climate catastrophe, to say nothing of addressing the root problem - far too many people on earth.
We won't take climate change and environmental degradation seriously until westerners start dying by the million. Starvation and social breakdown will start earlier in the tropics and subtropics, but we will deal with the resultant mass migration by sealing our borders, not changing the very basis of modern life. The earth will begin to recover, very slowly, with a great many species having gone extinct,only when the human population has been drastically reduced both in number and technology. Humans will persist at high latitudes where temperatures are still consistent with life, in a pre-industrial agricultural economy. Today's world will no longer exist.
1
One comment hits it on the nail, "Those who want to fix the climate by deprivation fail to understand human nature."
Behavior change is irrelevant anyway. Even if we change our behavior, disasters have become unavoidable because of the self-reinforcing feedback loops we have created. Still, I rather know what is happening. I am not telling my grandchildren; too cruel.
A few people will survive; maybe they can make a new start.
2
If the Editorial Board is serious about climate change, it will call for renewable energy, energy efficiency, and, yes, nuclear power. The article ignores nuclear power to our collective peril.
Many scientists, including Dr. Hansen, whom the Board references, have concluded that we cannot deal with climate change without a large expansion of nuclear power.
If the Board is serious it would start right here at home and investigate the enormous environmental impact of replacing Indian Point with gas. Doing so would release 7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide year after year, enough to negate New York's Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act before it even got started. Maybe New Yorkers are lemmings. If everyone is opposed to using fossil fuels to replace Indian Point, why is it about to happen? The Governor committed to replacing Indian Point with non-carbon sources but no State agency has provided him with a realistic plan to do this, nor has any environmental group come up with a non-carbon plan which is reliable and sufficient to meet our energy needs. Instead, New York State uses the excuse that there is no practical emergency response if an accident occurs. As a nuclear emergency response professional, I know that this is little more than fear mongering. We don't need or want a 50 mile evacuation, as some claim. Is New York State about to close Indian Point without making its own independent analysis about emergency responses?
5
Wow, this would have been a good editorial maybe 20 years ago. But now, we are in a rapidly accelerating climate emergency with all sorts of tipping points on the verge of taking place with little scientific understanding of how it will come out, except that rapid warming will occur. And then, once civilization's systems break down, global dimming (which has been keeping global temperatures down) will vanish and rapid warming will occur.
What we need the media leaders to do, is to prepare citizens for dealing with the coming effects (hothouse earth is estimated, among those who look at the whole data picture, to be within a handful of years at most). The human community can organize and prepare itself, but only if they get the information they need.
2
The ozone problem is one small piece of the global environmental problem that we call climate change. This environmental problem requires enormous changes in all aspects of the global economy, global energy production, global population control and much more. The title of this opinion piece shows the naivety of the NYT editorial board. Yes, the world will need science, innovation and international cooperation but the world will also need great sacrifice from all the people on our planet. Sacrifice.
5
Hey! I remember a mainstream media story apologizing for the Ozone Scare. The Freon ban didn't cure anything; it cured itself. WAKE UP. The only Freon released into the atmosphere were aerosol sprays. But of course, Millenials and "woke" probably wouldn't know this. It kinda shaded the rest of your story for me.
1
Corporate Capitalism must be neutered first, before any attempts at avoiding climate disaster can be meaningful.
1
Re: "For Americans, who as Andrew Yang pointed out in a debate, account for only about 15% of world carbon output"
What counts in fighting climate change is the emission per person. The higher, the easier it is to get it down
Here are the data for 2018
CO2 emission per capita in metric tons per year
US 16.1
France 5.2
UK 5.6
The French and British do not live worse than Americans but emit just one third of the CO2 American emit per person
But the do drive smaller cars
Start there.
Data
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita
6
One thing’s for sure: denying the very existence of climate change is deeply unhelpful and not going to solve the problem. It’s shameful that climate change deniers occupy the White House and control the US Senate. Stop electing these people.
Let’s deal with the problem!
4
As Bill Maher has said, humans aren't smart enough to save this planet. The real question is how to be happy as the ship sinks. My ever cheerful cousin told me the other day that some really smart person will come up with a way to recapture the CO2 in the atmosphere. I said, really, how about if we make special butterfly nets, and stick them out of holes on jet liners, so that as the million people traveling in the air at any one time, they will be catching all the CO2.
3
Too much fossil fuel money involved. There will be no change. You editorial people are incredibly naive to think so. Exxon snd their ilk own Congress. We are doomed.
It is too late in any event. If Trump is re-elected the delay will last for years.
His executive decisions and support for coal demonstrate we are going in the wrong direction. China is still creating coal plants.
Let’s just sit back and watch the destruction of planet earth.
2
Did the byline of this editorial actually say, "It Can Solve Climate Change"?
Solve?
Wouldn't a more accurate and realistic byline be, "It Can Help Lessen Climate Change" or "It Can Help Ameliorate the Effects of Climate Change"?
5
With all due respect, you people are dreaming! CFCs are to global climate change what a pop-gun is to thermonuclear war. Have you not read the science on this? We aren't talking about the cessation of a single group of man-made chemicals, we are talking about the cessation of "growth" as we know it. We, humanity, have been on a multi-century drug binge through the use of hydrocarbons and we are about to either fry or come down with the mother of all hangovers. Your column adds to our delusions about a soft landing where there is none to be found.
5
This sentence is a case of corporate amnesia: "The discovery made big news and rattled the public." Nope. It was first reported in the New York Times, got a quick but very low-key follow-up (I know, I was one of the editors of a competing rag chasing the story) and then simmered on the back burner for quite a while. The NYT editorial board should read their own paper's clips.
The cause finally prevailed because it was very, very simple--one chemical does one thing and it's dangerous. Easy-peasy: ban chlorofluorocarbons. Done and done!
To equate "climate change" today to the CFC situation is pernicious--typical over-simplification in the easily-frightened mass media. The "climate" is really a series of "models," most residing in super-computers, based on estimates--the UN report on the end of the world is littered with qualifying phrases that essentially say, "We don't know for certain." Do we actually, really, totally understand the ecology of this planet? Which has been through many, many variables in "climate," some of them disastrous--and without the heavy hand of industrialization. There was a recent book that tracked the final crackup of the western Roman empire to a brief, but sharp, period of...yes, class..."global warming" and then draught.
Stuff happens. When it's one chemical, we can get our hands around it. The whole doggoned world? Not so easy.
1
The apocalypse is welcome. It’s the Good News, isn’t it? What some of us do not understand is that total destruction looks very good to both the poor and disaffected and to the rich and selfish. The End of Days means no worry about your descendants finding work, the seas rising, dictatorships, or global war.
We’re just having a final, and perfect, to coin a phrase, party and you can grab whatever or whomever you can, because.... there’s no future at all.
Liberation.
1
“it’s worth asking why the world has not responded with similar resolve in dealing with the main global warming gases”
The aerosol industry had but a fraction of the lobbying might and campaign donation war chest of big energy - and in our corrupt political system apparently, even the risk of extinction loses out to greed.
It doesn’t help that we lack a major political party committed to substantive action. The Repubs deny climate change even exists - the Dems oo-measures, and theirlast president bragged* about how much oil and gas was extracted during their time in office.
“In fact, the problem . . . is that we’re actually producing so much oil and gas . . . that we don’t have enough pipeline capacity to transport all of it where it needs to go.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/obama-and-climate-change-the-real-story-104491/
2
"The world" solved the ozone problem because the major potential bad guy, the late Pete Dupont, recognised his responsibility and instantly did the Right Thing.
Dupont, later a Senator, was the major producer of chloro-fluorocarbons, the chemicals which threatened the ozone layer. His scientists came to him and told him of the menace. he promptly said "stop it," and they did.
The rest is detail.
With the rather larger carbon menace, things are more complicated. The first major step toward solving the problem was cap-and-trade-pricing, an idea first promoted by Rockefeller-backed environment researchers in the 1950s. The first practical step, with backing from the same oil-based wealth, was California's adoption of base-rate accounting for energy-saving measures by utilities. From the 1960s onward, PG&E was allowed to make a profit off investments in saving energy as well as from wasting it!
These, the Duponts' and Rockefellers' initiatives, were bright spots in my youth, sixty years ago -- when the problems were first clear and obvious.
The only thing of note since then has been well-financed and obdurate harm by the ignorant, the stupid, and the exploitive --- who now have their representative in the White House.
4
You think the people who stole technology can also steal a solution to global warming? Good Luck
2
with respect, this is comparing a mouse to an elephant.
the inconvenience of giving up certain spray propellants and refrigerant molecules has really little proportional comparison to replacing the entire global energy economy.
and comparisons are always invidious: how can we respond to climate change when we can't even get a harriet tubman $20?
here's the point: if you're the editorial board, you're effectively the media board of directors. now, i've said a lot of nasty things about USA boards of directors in the past, and i would probably say the same about your board of directors as well.
but unlike corporate boards of directors, which have no ethics and no principles, you're journalists, not suits, so you do have ethical responsibility, just like doctors or lawyers. you have the journalistic responsibility to report the facts, to conclude by editorial process what constitutes the reporting of facts, and then to propagate that decision down into the ranks as editorial policy.
so when i read your paper, i read your editorial policy about facts.
what you've done in this column is claim an editorial policy that you don't implement.
which of your opinion columnists has written a column directly confronting climate change? believer, denier; apostate, agnostic ... doesn't matter. which of your opinion columnists has personally grappled with the issue?
that's your editorial policy, in my read. and -- with respect -- it's hypocritical.
1
I think it is ironic that the so called Christians with their enthrallment with Trump are making the prophesy in Genesis come true. We are kicking ourselves out of the Garden of Eden by ruining the beautiful Earth that God has given us. And for what exactly? So they get to punish those whose behavior has zero material effect on them.
2
A recent PEW study noted that only 25% of American adults can discern fact from opinion. That number drops to about 9% for fifteen year olds, and 15% for Americans over 65 years of age. This is staggering. And worrisome. I bet the numbers weren't as low 30 years ago when the ozone problem emerged.
How can America take ANY leadership on issues of common interest, when 3/4 of the electorate is more apt to believe outlandish conspiracy theories rather than evidence-based facts established by the rigorous application of disciplinary knowledge or science? There is legitimate and well-founded forms of scientific skepticism, which is an inherent process of critical thinking and the scientific method. But most people confuse facile sneering at "experts" for intellectual skepticism. This reminds me of a well-known New Yorker cartoon from a few years ago: an angry man is standing on a plane, facing other passengers, and shouts, "These smug pilots have lost touch with regular passengers like us. Who thinks I should fly the plane?" The passengers have their arms raised in support.
That's how the world feels today. We are hijacked by stupid.
5
The best way to solve climate change is not to say scientists are always right and everybody else is wrong.
Don't get me wrong, science has helped give us classical Greece, the renaissance , modern medicine etc. but it also has stated in the past whites were superior to blacks, the brown race will disappear and countless useless tests, procedures, operations, pills and theories that have proven wrong.
Attack climate change in a multi lateral way ie the biggest way is to say carbon pollution is affecting our land, sea, air. People can see, feel and taste that.
They cannot physical relate to the fact the polar ice cap is melting.
1
A minor comment: please be aware that the original discovery of the ozone hole was made by Chubachi of the Japanese Meteorological Agency. While his work on this was initially published in Japanese and not widely know, that does not change the fact that he made the initial discovery.
1
Why has the NYT taken to publishing kumbaya op-eds like this and articles about climate change the merely repackage old news? It’s all been said, the news is out there. The reporting on what is actually happening is enough; the reader cares, or does not.
It you want to effect change with opinion pieces, try something else. People who care are not doing enough. I am at a loss as to why. The only thing I can think of that might help spark the needed responses is something like the Vietnam war dead names listings. Show us the newly dead coral, the added areas of bubbling permafrost, and the updated extinction trajectories, the burned koalas as graphically as possible. List how many miles Deloitte executives and consultants fly on business trips, create VR walkthroughs of flooded Miami neighborhoods, calculate the carbon footprint for next day Prime delivery of single shampoo bottles in individual cardboard boxes and the Japanese sushi flown to Las Vegas. Stoke outrage, shame, and fear. Is anything else working?
2
The US economy goes on a radical transformation in its economy just about every 80 years.
1780-1860
1860-1940
1940.......to 2020.
The most recent radical shift began like all the others, with a singular violent event. In our case, that event was 9-11.
...
The so-called "War on Terrorism",,which neglected to capture or kill, the actual terrorist(BinLadin)...has in reality been an attempt to STALL the changes. Just like Climate Change....PREVENT Change. Just like Impeach Trump....PREVENT Change.....defend the status quo.
The present Creaking "old" New Deal Bureaucratic Structures...still barely turning,,,,Soviet Style.
....
The future cannot be stalled ... any more than the Tides can be stopped from turning(ask the mythological King Canute).
....
The US economy is based on Oil and defending the World's access to it. Period. Nothing else matters. No amount of diversionary rhetoric from the Bush Minions, the DNC Political Machine, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, et al can prevent the changes.
Silicon replaces Carbon. US Manufacturing aided by High Chinese Tariffs will expand to manufacture incredible supplies of efficient PVs to produce more and more Electric Power. It is as simple as that. The Wind Power Bush League Scam will still have a niche market...but thats about all. We will need to replace the archaic WW2 era heavy water designs with more modern and safer designs. We will continue to need Nuclear Power to produce base load powers AND to desalinate ocean water.
I see most commenters think there is an existential threat to the world by climate change. I'm sure you all consider yourself open minded so you are willing to take a look at alternative perspectives- so, I suggest watching some YouTube videos by Tony Heller: https://www.youtube.com/user/TonyHeller1/videos
Once you've don't that- nobody can accuse you of only looking at one side.
1
Well let us see who in congress is on the oil and gas payroll,
Then we gotta crowd fund for The New Green deal and offer these politicians more to not take oil and gas money and instead support The New Green Deal. Or we could all join wolfpac.com, a group determined to get money out of politics, which would be cheaper but not as fast. I am willing to donate 100 dollars to bribe our elected representatives to do the right thing. And even slather them with praise for doing it. Trump isn't the only one who likes to be petted up. How about it America?
2
How do you militate for climate change when your own government forbids the use of the words "climate change" ?
2
The climate is dynamic thing that is in constant change from has many influences . The major one being the sun.
You can't solve climate change if those in power are willing to lie about it for personal gain.
As far as overpopulation is concerned, the single most reliable way to reduce population growth is to raise the standard of living. And as far as I know, it's the only option that isn't morally objectionable.
In this country, the same politicians who promote climate change denial are also the ones trying to reduce the standard of living for the vast majority of the population. And they all belong to one political party.
If you look around the world, you'll notice that these kinds of politicians, climate change deniers and income disparity expanders, all come from the same side of the political spectrum. They are all right-wing conservatives.
The only natural conclusion one can reach is that either they go, by removing them from power, or we all go.
There is no "third" option.
3
Ozone was readily resolved because the economic challenge was not significant. Green house gas emissions, however, is a market disrupter in the extreme. It is so disruptive that despite technology being available for more than 20 years to significantly reduce emissions, citizens of the world have no desire to meet their responsibilities.
Meeting person responsibility is the crucial factor. Home solar panels in sunny regions, wind turbines in the wind belts, modern nuclear including vitrification of waste (USA currently refuses this 30 yr old technology), replacing vehicles with hybrids or electric, retro-fitting home windows with low-E, IR absorbent films applied to older commercial building windows, eat local as best possible, reduce intake of feeder lot raised animals. . .
How many reading this have begun? How many on the NYT Editorial Board have met their personal responsibilities?
1
Not as long as population growth and increased material consumption is considered to benefit the economy
3
Poor analogy. CFC's had a small imprint on consumer goods and could easily be replaced. The effect of increased radiation by increased skin cancer rates and cataracts was easily made and understood by the public The American people still believed in facts and science (the republican cult has reversed this).
The big money in CO2 generating industries lies about its' effect and is spending huge amounts of money to counteract the facts. Fossil fuels are ubiquitous and necessary for industrial nations without a good, simple replacement. The fossil fuels industry has bought and paid for the republican cult that continues to spout its' lies.
Personally, I drive an electric vehicle, super insulated my home, believe in science, realize we have many good alternatives to fossil fuels that are viable with a little effort and vote Democrat. My negative feelings about humans reaction to climate change is based on the response of the republican cult to the voting rights act. These people are liars, bigoted, greedy and have a propaganda machine without rival.
1
NYC residents: get your food waste into compost. Prevents methane release and feeds out local gardens and plants. Find drop offs: Grow NYC and DOS can get some buildings started with organics collection.
1
Thank you..We also solved Acid Rain which was destroying wetlands in the northeast..Yes, c limate change is much b igger, but it is essentially the same type of problem as acid rain and ccf's destroying the ozone layer - oh and of course, please don't forget the DDT silent spring revolution..
I just wish all these scientists would be funded to look at climate change, instead of investigating human health to the mitochondrial level..It is ridiculous, the inbalance - of course it is way easier to look at human health from a scientific perspective..But come on guys! Put your talents to an area that reallly needs help, climate health, environmental health, the health of the koalas and the bees..Please..
2
Personal transportation is now the largest single factor in climate change.
Bicycle or walk for personal transportation needs.
Don't wait for science. Nicholas Kristof degraded science futures in his opinion piece yesterday.
Don't wait for industry. The Ford motor company is transitioning its production to large pickup trucks.
Don't wait for government. Trump is here today. 'Nuff said.
You can start tomorrow, Monday.
And global warming ain't the only major crisis you'll be helping solve.
2
Sadly, many readers are missing the point of this editorial. For sure, climate change is much more complex an issue than the Ozone problem. And for sure, sacrifices from everyone will be required. But the options are simple: we either try our best to do something OR we give up, completely wreck the planet, and humans will eventually die off as a species.
The real point of the editorial is that human cooperation and ingenuity CAN solve this problem - IF there’s the political will to do so. Therein lies the real problem. So - don’t just sit around, complain, and get depressed - DO something! Get educated on the facts and help others get educated, join a group, protest, force politicians to be accountable - and vote only for politicians who are willing to do something! Act as if your life depends on it - because it, your offspring’s, and everyone else’s does! Seriously - pontificating in NYT comments pages and hand wringing won’t help anything!
Finally - a reminder: climate change is NOT a partisan issue, and it doesn’t discriminate whether you’re rich or poor - despite dis- and mis-information to convince you otherwise. Everyone eventually will be forced to change - and the longer we wait to act, the more drastic will be the changes if we don’t collectively act now. Maybe sooner than we think. So get on it - NOW! Don’t wait for the 2020 elections!
2
The reason the ozone crisis was handled effectively is that the handful of trusted news organizations (3 networks and a dozen or so major newspapers) all reported that there was, indeed, a crisis. If the hole in the ozone layer were discovered today, roughly half the population would refuse to acknowledge its existence, claiming that the whole thing was made up by the left wing media in a diabolical plot to eliminate air conditioning and refrigeration.
1
weather the world "solved" the ozone problem, or there actually was no problem to solve, or nature solved the misunderstood ozone "problem" still remains a contentious scientific issue. Regardless, at least in the Ozone case there was a plausible sounding, if perhaps overly simplifying, scientific argument, that CFCs could act as a catalyst in ozone destruction that themselves do not get consumed and linger in the atmosphere.
The theory of Global Warming is a highly implausible scientific theory that has been pushed into the status of "accepted truth" through relentless propaganda campaigns. It only gets worse from there. The world of 7+ billion people lives in the reality of severe energy scarcity which translates itself into widespread poverty. This is the primary issue that needs to be addressed, not pseudo scientific climate chimeras. Western elites that keep pushing the "climate problem", themselves living a dream life of jet setting around the world in gas guzzling private jets, while at the same time preaching enduring poverty to others, are our biggest problem. These elites are living in a dangerous bubble of sycophantic echo chamber that is now fueling world wide resurgence of every kind of fascism that afflicted the Western Civilization in it's (mostly) inglorious, horrifying, murderous past. We need to focus on energy scarcity and world poverty, not elitist hot air. With so many nukes around, this may be your last wake up call.
The Montreal Protocol played a major role in limiting global warming. It took effect in 1989. By 1993, the increase in CFC concentrations stopped. By 1995, the increase in ozone depletion stopped. By 1998, the increase in temperatures stopped. Without the Montreal Protocol, global temperatures today would probably be 0.5 degrees Celsius warmer (YouTu.be/NF438LDeqLA). Humans caused the warming by manufacturing CFCs and humans stopped the warming by passing the Montreal Protocol, the greatest experiment ever done linking global warming to changes in concentrations of gases in the atmosphere.
Temperatures hardly rose from 1998 to 2013. From 2014 to 2016, however, temperatures rose abruptly, apparently due to ozone depletion caused by the eruption of Bárðarbunga volcano, the largest basaltic eruption since 1784. Throughout geologic history, large basaltic lava flows are contemporaneous with major global warming—the larger the flow, the greater the warming.
Ozone depletion explains detailed observations of climate change much more directly and precisely than greenhouse-warming theory (WhyClimateChanges.com/predictions/). Greenhouse warming theory may not even be physically possible (WhyClimateChanges.com/impossible/.
The problem is that my fellow scientists are so enamored with the “consensus”, they just cannot conceive there might be any problems with this theory. Solving this crisis in climate science should be our first priority. Ignoring reality is becoming very costly.
1
If you’d like to see one of our problems in fixing this, take a good hard look at the unusually-ripe heap of scientific ignorance, silly politicking, and fantasy on view in these comments.
One guy wants to build more nukes, and doesn’t know that that was part of Obama’s energy plan.
One thinks men need to get out, because they don’t have anything to do with population growth anyway.
One says give up, we can’t do anything about the “hundred year heat pipe.”
One says don’t do anything, because Vietnam and China and anyway that Obama wasn’t doing till 2024.
One assures that if we but elect St. Bernie, things will be tickety, because that mean old Hillary was on Howard Stern.
One says sure, but scientists disagree and were wrong about overpop and famine and war. Which will be gladsome tidings in, say, Yemen.
And a lot of people are yelling at the editorial for very strange reasons.
Keep up the squabbling, kids. Maybe you can re-elect Trump and make things even worse.
1
Don't be so sure that the world has solved the Ozone Problem.
In spite of the ban on the production of CFC-11 production has never ceased and it probably increasing today.
While atmosphere-friendly substitutes exist for CFCs as a refrigerant, most are more expensive to produce and are not as efficient as a refrigerant.
For just a few references:
"Illegal CFC production may be slowing ozone layer recovery"
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/illegal-cfc-production-may-be-slowing-ozone-layer-recovery/3009035.article
https://eia-international.org/report/blowing-it/
https://eia-international.org/climate/illegal-trade-in-refrigerants/
Finally, as others have pointed out, equating the ozone hole problem with a planetary-wide warming is verging on a category error.
Big Oil, the real enemy of Earth, as aided and abetted by TOO MANY HUMANS, is exacerbating the raping of the planet's resources, and the resultant pollution alone is becoming nearly unmanageable.
This story starts 50 years ago, when the planet had HALF the population we now "enjoy". The rush to reap oil from the warming, and nearly ice-free Arctic is the current example of the insane greed and avarice of both transnational oil companies ("but it's for the shareholders") and the power-obsessed countries (russia, and US) enabling them (we must have energy dominance!").
It's past the point when we could control the rising temperature of the atmosphere, and that's because of methane, not only CO2. Methane is being released into the atmosphere in quantities almost immeasurable (Big Oil frackers don't want you to know this), coupled with the thawing permafrost, which HAD contained methane for millennia. Methane retains heat when exposed to sunlight, MANY times more than CO2, and is the biggest contributor to the warming atmosphere. The "runaway greenhouse effect" we were warned about back in the 70s is almost upon us, as the effect is exponential, not linear. The word "runaway" doesn't seem to be getting through.
We can control the human birthrate with free birth control (which reduces the demand) and try to develop alternate energy sources while we have the time to do so, as oil is a TEMPORARY energy source.
We need real leadership, for HUMANITY, not "profits".
Man caused CO2 climate-change is a hoax.
1. CO2 was higher in the past
“Dinosaur Era Had 5 Times Today's CO2. Dinosaurs that roamed the Earth 250 million years ago knew a world with five times more carbon dioxide than is present on Earth today, researchers say, and new techniques for estimating the amount of carbon dioxide on prehistoric Earth may help scientists predict how Earth's climate may change in the future.”
https://www.livescience.com/44330-jurassic-dinosaur-carbon-dioxide.html
2. Long before the Industrial Revolution, the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of warm climate from about 900–1300 AD, when global temperatures were somewhat warmer than at present. Temperatures in the GISP2 ice core were about 2°F (1°C) warmer than modern temperatures.
https://www.elsevier.com/books/evidence-based-climate-science/easterbrook/978-0-12-804588-6
3. Long before the Industrial Revolution, a significant heat wave occurred in Europe in July 1757. The heat wave may have been the second hottest summer in Europe in the past 500 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_1757_heatwave
4. Deep in the Depression the 1936 North American heat wave was one of the most severe heat waves in the modern history of North America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_North_American_heat_wave
1
There are and will be too many humans who, by their insatiable wants desires and numbers, will destroy all of earth’s intricate interrelated systems until we humans have destroyed our very selves. Then the earth will shakes us off as another failed species and move on a much degraded and different evolutionary path.
1
In addition to my earlier screed, let me add this. The ozone hole was caused by our irresponsible use of CFC's etc. We fixed the ozone hole by eliminating CFC's.
Our current environmental disaster is caused by burning Fossil Fuels. The only known way to fix it is by eliminating Fossil Fuels. Think through the impacts of that one …
The NYT is once again peddling false hope that ignores the real cause of climate change; we humans are consuming resources at a level and in ways that are destroying the natural systems we depend on for a livable planet. Arguing that we can meet the challenges of an overheating atmosphere by shifting our consumption patterns is a form of denial equally as damaging as claiming the problem doesn't exist. Unless those of us who consume resources at very high levels can learn to live with less there is no hope for a future remotely like the present. If the NYT chooses not to share this reality then you are complicit in the problem.
2
With a new President, the USA can reclaim global leadership on this looming crisis, away from disaster.
2
Ending CFC pollution, and politically overcoming its constituencies' power, were a drop in the ocean compared to, first, reducing greenhouse gases from hydrocarbon burning and methane releases, and second, ameliorating the severe practical consequences from the greenhouse gases we've already put in the atmosphere.
Whether the world has the political will to fight the equivalent of a dozen simultaneous WWII's, presenting a relatively far more amorphous and therefore less galvanizing threat, remains to be seen. If the United States' example over the last quarter century, particularly the trend, is any indication, we can count on only one thing: climate doom.
This article is deceptive and extremely frustrating as a graduate student who studies climate change and its effects. This type of sentiment is exactly why some people think that they are helping the planet by not using plastic bags or biking to work. While those actions are valid and beneficial to creating a more healthy environment, climate change is driven by HUGE issues that have been occurring for decades and sustained primarily by large scale economic choices. There is no single law that can be put into place (like in the case of CFCs) that will solve climate change.
Think about it like this. If we stopped 100% of carbon emissions TODAY. The climate would still warm for the next 100 years due to the latency of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
What we really need is a fundamental leap in the science of carbon capture equivalent to technological difference between a Model T and a Prius.
This article is shameful lip service to moderation and the ease of solving climate change. It is exactly for this reason that the only people who will have my vote in 2020 is the person who has been the most aggressive on climate change, Bernie.
2
Why haven't we faced this crisis? In 1995 Fox News went on the air dedicated to the proposition that Republicans are always right, and Democrats are always wrong. In 2000, Al Gore was leading the charge on climate change, and running for President, Fox News decided to heap scorn on him and all climate scientists, gave nearly 70% of its airtime to deniers, and laughed at and shouted down anyone who disagreed. That's how modern Republicans came to think climate change is a Democratic hoax.
Chances are, because they watch Fox News, Republicans have not heard of studies about the increasing damage climate change is doing, even faster than anticipated. Likely, they don’t know we’re at a tipping point. And if they did, they would just laugh and call it fake news.
It’s true that Reagan was President when we acted on ozone. But that was the old Republican Party before they were molded into the anti-science, anti-green energy and anti-future party . With such know-nothings in power, nothing will get done.
2
Science and industry is certainly capable of tackling the issue and make significant improvements to contain and eventually reduce the issue.... but it requires the active teamwork of both.. at the auspices and funding of government (simply because of the size of the issue, and the complex nature of it, not to mention all the industry special interests who are motivated to impair action).
US government does not even officially recognize climate change as an issue, much less have any administrative or legislative energy applied to move remedies forward. Until that changes... nothing changes... except climate.. which can and will continue to change.
2
Too many climate change advocates see the problem as insurmountable. But these same people are assuming that the technology of 2025, much less 2040 will not not much further advanced than that of 2020. There are many solutions out there, and wringing our hands in despair is not one of them.
1
@ John Patt
What are the solutions that will move the needle?
According to MIT expert, the best we can hope for is to hold warming to 3.5 deg C by centuries end.
See, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2019-11-21/climate-change-presentation-by-mit-s-sterman-new-economic-forum-video
I can't help but imagine how different the world might be right now if the electoral college hadn't stolen the election from Al Gore, for whom preventing global warming was a priority, and given it to GW Bush, who started the Iraq War based on false claims of WMDs. And now we have Trump, also an EC fix, whose Environmental Pollution Agency has rolled back environmental protections.
Of course, Trump alone isn't at the root of lack of action. Sunny Hawaii should be leading the nation in clean energy solutions, but gas-guzzling SUVs clog the highways and most of us are still on electricity. Last night, a friend whose newly built home features several solar panels told us their electric bill is about $9 monthly. (Living in a high rise precludes my husband and I from undertaking this remedy.) Meanwhile, minor storms result in widespread power outages due, I assume, to insufficiently maintained infrastructure.
2
The main reason climate change is a vastly worse problem is that the rise in CO2 is essentially irreversible, while the ozone problem will heal over decades. Look up "mauna loa co2" for a grim picture of what we are facing - atmospheric carbon levels are at levels unprecedented since before humans existed, and continue to rise with no end in sight. Even if we miraculously stopped all carbon emissions, C02 levels will not come down for tens of thousands of years. This is not like an oil spill or conventional air or water pollution, where natural processes clean up the damage within a few decades if the ongoing source can be stopped.
2
Molina, Rowland, and Crutzen identified one sole factor destroying the ozone thin layer, average of 8 millimeters in thickness. Carbon dioxide emissions are a much bigger problem of all the industrial societies. The only successful solution would be massive investment in harnessing solar energy, more than 100 years after the discovery of photoelectricity and its theoretical explanation by Einstein.
Shall it be two degrees. Do I hear three? Who'll give me four? Can we survive five? That is the trajectory we are on currently. What will the world look like with each passing degree. If we throw in the towel and say the problem is too large to tackle, people the age of the President's grandchildren are going to live it.
Having wealth may take the sting out of surviving on an ever warming planet but, using a strange twist of terms, it will be cold comfort and short lived. That wealth is derived from the very people who will suffer the most from a progressively degrading climate.
Change starts at home. All individuals in a leadership roles (political, business, academic, media and spiritual) must agree that the facts in hand demand an action plan. This will mean many will have to change the current dogma they ascribe to and bring those who follow their thinking in line with what must be accomplished.
And that would be just a good start. The heavy lifting would follow.
I have a friend who kept an old issue of Popular Science from 1989 that had this headline: "Are we 18 years too late to deal with Climate Change?"
The Times used the word "mammoth" a couple of times in this piece. I saw a short film on a rather eccentric Russian scientists who thinks Mammoths are one possible solution to the melting of the Siberian tundra. Clone some DNA and reintroduce mammoths to trample the ground and keep the methane from escaping.
That is going to take some time to accomplish.
Just as it will take time to convince the oil oligarchs to abandon the capped oil as a form of wealth (oil in capped wells is deemed to be the same worth as oil in the pipe lines).
This is going to take a Global effort to convince humans we need to act; and it will not be made easier when one of our major political parties is just fine with turning a blind eye to the problems or the solutions.
2
Republicans acting in the long term interest of anything? That would be a new one. Did they actually do that at one time?
Yes, we can solve Climate Change - it's readily solvable. We have most of the technology we need, but we have a party that thinks only for today, acts only for its short-term interests, has no honor, and is willing to lie. spread disinformation, and smear anyone which gets in its way. There's just no integrity there anymore.
How Republicans sleep at night I don't know, but until they grow some you know what and start acting in their children's and grandchildren's best interests - we're never going to be able to do what we need to do.
Let's hope they start thinking about how history will remember them.
4
As soon as someone discovers a way to make a lot of money from either engines that don't emit CO2 or from a way to remove it from the atmosphere and easily store it, we will solve the problem.
That will likely occur after the first magnitude 12 climate event (a trillion dollar disaster).
Success in healing the ozone hole is encouraging -- and promoting such success lines up with a TED talk of a few years ago that said scaring us doesn't encourage us to change our behavior -- to get us to act beneficially -- but that recognizing some bit success does. The other components to successful change include immediate rewards for taking actions that benefit us in the future -- for example, maybe offering a tax cut/rebate for curbing one's emissions -- and seeing how we stack up against others -- social action --
What if we knew how well each of our neighbors was doing to promote a healthier planet? What other immediate rewards could we receive for doing the right thing for future generations?
It succeeded because the hype didn't suggest that we had to give up air conditioning to solve it. Those who want to fix the climate by deprivation fail to understand human nature.
4
This is a dangerous headline and story. It leads the casual reader to feel that change is coming and perhaps we're on the cusp of taking care of the problem. The reality is far from that. As the piece accurately states, there have been alarming scientific reports and dramatic climate-related disasters recently, but the real obstacles are individual behavior change and immediate cost of addressing the issues. Both are drastically greater than the CFC crisis. In a time when we have become accustomed to convenience and science has become part of a deeply partisan rift, even the smallest changes are like fruit and water to poor Tantalus.
1
The differences between the ozone hole threat and climate change are important. There were (are) only a few manufacturers of organofluorine compounds,but many fossil fuel companies. It was comparatively easy to regulate the former, although there is evidence that some countries are cheating.
1
I take a certain solace in the fact that I will not be here long enough to experience the collapse of civilization due to failure to deal adequately with climate change. "Solving" the ozone problem took a few tweaks and no change of lifestyle. Avoiding climate catastrophe would require a profound reorganization of society and enormous changes in lifestyle of, among others, Americans, of which they are incapable.
1
I'm surprised to see so many negative comments from NYT readers, in large part based on the imperfect comparisons made. The message is positive: we can mitigate climate change if we try hard enough.
If you do not "believe" in climate change or that we can "solve" it, how about changing your life style for other reasons? Reasons that make sense to you?
Next time you have to buy a car, buy an electric car, not for the climate, but to save money and to avoid lining the pockets of oil billionaires.
Bike to work, not for the climate, but because it's quiet, peaceful, you don't have to fight for parking, it saves you money, and it makes you feel good. Saves time too, as you get your exercise in and don't have to spend as much time at the gym.
Eat less meat to kill fewer animals and because it may make you feel good and help you reinvent your meals.
Switch to bamboo toothbrushes and bar soap not to help the environment but because they are cheaper than plastic and bottled alternatives and don't fill your garbage cans as quickly.
Install solar panels not for the environment but because it will save you money - more money for you, less for oil and gas companies.
3
Overpopulation and urbanization are the culprits. Population reduction and the relocation of the world's urban population to small, self-sufficient and autonomous communities that practice sustainable agriculture to meet their needs is required. Technological civilization must be abandoned. But is this possible? It's a very long shot, in my opinion.
Clean Air and Water Acts are pollution control driven and established in the early 1970s to curb emissions and discharges - not remediation of the earth's atmosphere and hydrosphere as impacted. For example, a factory just had to apply treatment on its discharges to comply with established limits - not remediate (clean up) the atmosphere downwind and river downstream. In other words, Clean Air and Water Acts were established to curb sinning (both ongoing and going forward).
A seemingly more applicable regulatory framework to climate change mitigation and adaptation is the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund). CERCLA came out in 1980 and later amended in 1986. The purpose of Superfund was to assign liability (to responsible parties) and get compensation to clean up past messes. Or sins of the past. Superfund came out just before climate change got attention in Washington.
Assigning liability and establishing compensation allocations, as is the case with Paris and the omnibus climate movement (Green New Deal), may be what's driving such a fierce pushback to addressing climate change.
Regardless of what happens, my guess is the winners of climate change will be lawyers.
Another critical difference between the CFC-driven Ozone hole problem and fossil fuel driven climate change: what is the clear and present danger and who does it affect? The arctic Ozone hole was going to enlarge to encompass northern latitudes and work its way to mid latitudes. That is, North Americans and Europeans were going to feel the first and worst effects. The headline danger—increased skin cancer from the UV rays that the Ozone layer absorbs—was simple to understand. That only one non-disruptive technology change was necessary made the fix palatable.
The headline danger of climate change has swung from vague global warming of a few degrees (easily dismissed by populations that understand neither statistics, thermodynamics, climate, or other earth sciences), to warm and fuzzy concerns about polar bears, to concerns about sea-level rise of a few inches in our lifetimes to existential concerns about the habitability of our planet and the realization that disruption of basic food supplies and accompanying mass migrations may pose existential threats (but primarily to those in the lower latitudes).
"Solve Climate Change"—what does that even mean? We have already disrupted the equilibrium of atmospheric cycles and climate patterns. The momentum of those changes may tip the balance in some major ocean currents. Yes, we have to end our addiction to fossil fuels, but we will be in "mitigation" mode—responding to changes already put into motion—for generations.
Here's simple thing you can do right now, this holiday season. Buy carbon offsets as stocking stuffers. It's less expensive that you might think. You can offset a continental round trip for as little as $20. There are many sites out there, just be sure to google to find certified sites. You can provide funds to plant trees, recapture methane, build sustainable energy projects around the world, fund agricultural projects. Your kids and grandkids might appreciate this kind of effort for their future.
2
Geoengineering allows for a much easier way out of the climate crisis than the drastic changes in the economy and people's way of life that are being currently pushed with almost religious fervor. Nature's own experiments - when the whole Earth cooled down by several degrees after the volcanic eruptions depositing dust and sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, or when CO2 take-up by the large bodies of water drastically increases from the minor fertilization with certain minerals - clearly show that if the scientific and technical effort is put into development of "asymmetrical" approaches to the crisis all of us will be much better off than when time is wasted on moralizing and antagonizing each other.
Good conceptual proposals, e.g. for seeding the regions of the ocean with low levels of iron salts that hugely boost CO2-immobilizing algae activity (as well as increase the fish stocks), and for depositing sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, could be developed, quantified, validated on a scale and implemented with hundreds of times less spending that the decarbonization of our civilization.
2
Sulfur in the air results in global cooling and acid rain. CO2 sequestering in the oceans changes the ph of the water and devastated ecologies that support many species of sea life. Pumping recovered carbon dioxide gas from fossil fuel burning is an energy demanding process that probably will not help much. There are no quick and simple and affordable solutions, yet.
1
Fossil fuels are the ultimate Progress Trap.
"A progress trap is the condition human societies experience when, in pursuing progress through human ingenuity, they inadvertently introduce problems they do not have the resources or political will to solve, for fear of short-term losses in status, stability or quality of life." -- Wikipedia
2
Misleading headline above a misleading editorial. You make it sound too easy and just give the naysayers another excuse to keep on living unsustainably. As other commenters note, the CFC/ozone hole deal was like shooting fish in a barrel compared to our current multi-faceted existential disaster.
The term "climate change" is a PR error which way understates our situation. Every single aspect of our environment is screaming in pain, the red lights are all flashing and the sirens are all blaring.
Yeah, the climate is going crazy, but we're also filling our oceans with plastic while removing O2 and almost every living being. We're losing essential topsoil at a shocking rate and Big Ag is poisoning the rest. We're ruining our precious surface freshwater with Big Ag runoff, sewage and fracking fluids as we suck our ancient aquifers dry to grow corn to put in the gas tanks of our gashogs. The air's unbreathable in Kolkata, Mexico City and increasingly, in SLC and Denver.
We have two choices:
1. Bite the bullet and end our Fossil Fuel addiction now, ala, the Green New Deal. Will it be hard? Will it be disruptive? Will it be ugly? You bet, but at least there's a (slim) chance we'll save our sorry butts.
2. Ignore it all, party on, continue slashing and burning while denying that there's nothing wrong and, anyway, I don't want to give up my plush lifestyle.
I'm bettin' on #2.
3
@Miss Anne Thrope #2 is the ape way, so it will "win".
By 2050 there will be 10,000,000,000 people on Earth.
Emissions will continue to rise- and I suspect they will rise at about the same rate as the population increases.
45% increase in human population in the next 31 years.
We are digging our own graves. The only realistic solutions is a global war or pandemic that stops that increase in population and reverses it.
We can survive with a billion humans. We cannot with 7 billion.
2
@Willt26 All we need to do is control the birthrate. We don't need to kill anybody. It's that simple.
We have a surplus of billionaires, bored and aimless. They could provide free birth control for the entire planet.
THAT would win a Nobel Peace Prize.
3
Nah. If the billion humans left consume at the rate of current first world citizens you aren’t even slowing emissions. Consumption patterns are the immediate issue.
I'm not sure what "world" the NYTimes is depending on to "solve" climate change but clearly China isn't interested in being a resident. As the largest producer of carbon gases linked to rising temperatures, China now releases about 30 percent of the world’s total. The bad news for the "world" crowd is that they are planning to produce much more and India is right on their heels.
China burns about half the coal used in the world each year. Coal is a fossil fuel that releases carbon dioxide and other gases when it is burned and officials recently announced that they are increasing their support for coal and other heavy industries. That is because those industries are important parts of China’s energy system and economy and coal is cheap. At the same time, the country is reducing subsidies for renewable energy because they're expensive and incapable of supporting their industries.
Clearly the "world" isn't interested in solving climate change. Most Americans are wise enough to accept that and have largely tuned out the constant admonitions by editorial Boards, belligerent teenagers like Greta Thunberg and sanctimonious billionaires like Michael Bloomberg that they are the cause and can alone effectuate a solution.
Addressing population growth is the only way to deal with climate change. Immigration needs to be curtailed as well.
As climate change pressures increase, and entire regions of the planet experience devastating environmental shifts, there will be intense pressure to shift large amounts of people from one place to another.
We cannot allow that to happen as it will be a quick street to total devastation.
Sadly we are past the point when we can save everyone. Its time to focus on saving what we can. Deluges of people are going to result in the few places we can save being destroyed. It is time to prioritize- if you end up trying to save everything you might end up not being able to save anything.
Best of luck to everyone.
2
Start by endorsing Bernie or Liz Warren and the Green New Deal.
The rest will follow.
4
Tea Party Republicans were driven by greed as evidenced in their Don't Tread on Me logo, irresponsible tax cuts that led to trillion dollar deficits, and their ends justify the means embrace of Putin. The most troubling sign among them is their rejection of scientific evidence that rivals the Middle Age contempt for science that forced Galileo into silence. We can't let greedy people have their way with us anymore and must elect a Congress and President with our best interests and humanity in mind.
1
This is a magnificent perspective! Let us hope that world leaders of all kinds can take it to heart and reward potential solutions. There needs to be a public score card decoding the real from the phony ones too.
Yeah, it could happen, and I'm sure it will just as soon as the majority of those in power, both politically and economically, decide to start acting in the interests of humanity as a whole. Yep, it could happen, but not here, not in this world.
1
This actually isn't quite as complicated as this article makes it out to be. Cap and trade, which was briefly referenced above, provides us a lesson: capitalism, when given the proper parameters through good public policy, can unleash innovative forces that solve problems. Because markets do such a good job of producing information, policy makers don't really need to know how to solve these problems; they just need to establish the rules of the road for private enterprise. Politics is where it gets complicated, which brings me to my next point.
The aforementioned "cap and trade" -- which dealt with sulfur pollution -- was cooked up by economists to appease conservative Republicans (e.g., HW Bush) by leaving the details to the (cue warm tingling feeling) "free market." As we can all see, Republicans aren't conservative any more. They're Koch-brother-funded wingnut welfare recipients who pretend to be market-loving patriotic conservatives. Who is it that's now peddling ideas such as cap and trade or the carbon tax? Democrats. Both the "progressives" and "moderates."
I submit to you that Senator Warren is more of a conservative than any of the clowns in the Republican Party. The science is sound; unfortunately, disinformation and fanaticism are formidable.
"The World Solved the Ozone Problem. It Can Solve Climate Change."
Compared with the ozone problem, the climate change crisis is many times deeper and substantially broader. It is important not to trivialize the climate change calamity by such inappropriate juxtapositions.
I am afraid this is the type of uniformed commentary that will be seized upon by climate change deniers. They will use that to justify their disregard for environmental regulations and perpetuation of policies that have forced the humanity to face the current cataclysm.
3
I think oil seems to also have a kind of symbolic, emotional, even patriotic meaning (at least in the U.S.) that CFCs didn't. So when you talk about reducing our oil use, it kind of hits people as though you're talking about reducing our strength or our power, or simply who we are.
A whimper where a howl is desperately needed regarding the ever mounting signs and impacts of global catastrophe that human induced climate degradation is daily presenting.
The earth will persist on its own cataclysmic terms without regard for human wants, sensibilities, or survival; it has done so over billions of years.
The means and the technology to affect climate remission are available now, what is lacking is the will and a broad global concensus to take action on the scope and intensity demanded.
Notions such as going back to the moon become ridiculous in the face the challenge to human survival that is unequivocally the premier threat to the human species. The same is true for trillion dollar defense spending when by far the greatest threat to national and human security is the climate threat.
2
Consider the alternative. We seem to be at the point where only major technological breakthroughs can save the present occupants of Liferaft Earth. It is not impossible, just impossibly urgent.
1
Thank you for taking a necessary, vital and positive stance. The bad news is overwhelming, and so damaging to people, especially children. It creates a nihilistic line of thinking. A number of ways to capture carbon have been invented. What remains is to remove coal from use in China and India, and to force Brazil to stop destroying the rain forest.
2
There’s an enormously incalculable difference in magnitude between ozone and climate change. The ozone problem was/is centered on reducing CFCs. Merely reducing so-called climate change gases will have little effect on reducing ocean temperatures quickly. Their reduction will of course have an effect on slowing temperature increase. Just not fast enough.
All the technologies used to reduce climate gasses have disastrous consequences on the environment. The precious metals carved out of the ground by child labor. The plastics required for all technologies. Renewed interest in nuclear power.
And yet, nobody has the audacity to mention controlling population growth or actual reductions in the use of energy. The latter is meant to indicate doing less as opposed to finding was to do more through more efficient technologies, all of which have become just more trash in very short time.
INSTEAD: Just use less of everything. Go fewer places. Travel more slowly. Give fewer gifts. Purchase only necessities. Turn lights off when not on a room. Keep heat set lower by wearing a sweater. You know? Stuff like that. And forget about gadgets with energy saving promises that leave toxic trash behind. They take lots of energy to make.
3
Without national and international leadership -- and there is none -- humans will be doomed to a cave man sort of existence within a couple of generations.
There is a vast difference between the ability to solve this problem and our willingness to do it. In the US at least half the problem arises from Mr. Trump and conservatives making their judgement by looking in the rear view mirror and disbelieving science about human caused demolition of Earth as a viable living space.
In the US the same "shake things up" and in your face contempt for elites that elected Donald Trump may just keep him in office.
The fact that most of the population does not regard climate change as our number 1 problem but instead ranks items like Roe v Wade, gun control, the wall, the economy, and healthcare as more important, indicates a fundamental lack of grasp of the climate disaster. Barring the presence of climate change those can be significant and important issues, but not one of them nor all of them taken together outrank the fact that humanity will be wiped out within our grandchildren's lifetimes.
But people want to "wait and see". Proof for that statement? Trump is a clear contender for Presidency in 2020. He wouldn't be if the population cared.
We indeed have the technical tools to solve the problem if we want, like the CFC problem, but we won't use them. Bickering over keeping our assault rifles just seems so much more important.
3
We pick out an uninhabited Pacific island and we build a coal fired power plant. Next to it we put a Hummer that runs on energy generated by the plant and we start the Hummer and let it idle. And we set in motion lots more carbon emission menaces. Then we build a bubble around the island and watch as the ocean water heats up, expands, and the island goes down. We video the whole thing, speed it up and play Jaws music in the background. We get YouTube to give it big play. The thing goes viral and gets more hits than Gagnam Style. Everyone finally gets climate change and we all live happily ever after.
Really? Because the world managed to eliminate one class of chemicals which hadn't existed before the then current generation by substituting other materials that worked almost as well, we can look upon the expected difficulty of radically lowering the use ALL fossil fuels in a similar time frame as somehow being similar. This is magical thinking.
Maybe it could be seen as instructive were the ban on CFC's meant the effective end of all mechanical cooling in dwellings and vehicles and if all climates were like Phoenix or Miami. But, reality is that we cannot realistically "solve" global warming without significant economic pain (which may mean a lower 401K in some areas, or a shorter lifespan in others). Yes, it is true that we can probably mitigate some of that pain, especially in the more developed parts of the world, through technological invention, but by how much is questionable; the billions living in the 3rd world cannot participate in carbon offset credits to make up for they're family trip to Thailand.
The vastly divergent costs to lower CO2 among the world, along with equally disparate effects of global warming makes the political dilemma inherent in any solution to GW immeasurable when compared to the CFC ban.
2
The New York Times published an article headlined “How Scientists Got Climate Change So Wrong” on Nov 8. It said “large, abrupt climate changes have affected hemispheric to global regions repeatedly, as shown by numerous paleoclimate records.” Paleoclimatology is the study of climates prevalent in the geological past. The planet been abruptly cooling or abruptly warming for millions of years. Human activity might influence climate change, but it does not cause climate change.
We may slow the pace of current global warming by reducing carbon emissions—a worthy goal—but we can’t stop climate change. We need to be developing strategies to cope with inevitable climate change.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/opinion/sunday/science-climate-change.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
2
That article discussed the reasons that climatologists UNDERestimated the warming effects of greenhouse gasses, as I’ll bet you know perfectly well.
It did not in any way argue that it’s all just natural cycles.
It should concern people that they are unable to make their case honestly, without distorting the data and the arguments.
2
I have worked on technical aspects of carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration is generally seen as a first but significant step toward atmospheric CO2 reduction. Yet, earthquakes following CO2 injection, in addition to the added energy costs for capture and injection, will significantly limit this option. This editorial got it completely wrong. What prevents us from making more progress is the lack of available technical solutions that allow us to transition to new energy sources at the required global scale without major disturbance to the global economy and living standard.
2
Certainly this makes sense. But with Trump the "Hegemon of the hydrocarbon" to paraphrase in his policy goals there is a major obstacle. The EPA actively supports Trump and his special interest cronies who want to roll back the clean air and clean water acts as bad for business. Much has already begun in the private sector and state gov'ts to fight climate change. But Trump needs to be defeated first before any major effort can move forward.
1
The one thing that the average Joe or Jane can do right now is this: Park the car and start walking. Not only is doing this good for the planet, but good for one's self.
2
@Alan C Gregory,
The majority of the United States is designed around cars--in some parts of he country it is downright dangerous to be a pedestrian
Improving density, especially in larger cities, would help with climate change--denser housing requires fewer resources per person than single-family homes--especially if coupled with improving walkablity and mass transit because people wouldn't need to drive as much.
There is fierce resistance to denser development in many places, including by people who claim to care about climate change, and certainly opposition to mass-transit as well, so I don't expect things to improve any time soon.
3
@Louis I agree. And it is a great tragedy that so much of our societal goal is to make things good for cars, not real people. I am a traumatic brain injury survivor. My bicycle -- with em on it -- was truck by an out-of-control car on April 29, 007. America is no longer about people; it is about cars. And keeping cars happy is the mission. Sad
1
It's easy for climate activists to project hatred toward those they blame for global warming, demand that whole industries be shut down, that industrial processes be banned, that entire lifestyles be discontinued. They instinctively turn to government to do this for them because they don't know what needs to be done, but want action now. The problem of climate change is infinitely bigger, but will be solved in the same way as the problem of chlorofluorocarbons: Activists, annoying as they were, brought the issue to public attention, but what then? Millions of people in thousands of companies made millions of small substitution and product design decisions that reduced and/or made chlorofluorocarbon use safer. The same will be done with carbon/CO2 generators like oil. It will take decades, stabilizing the climate will take a century, but it will happen. Draconian action by governments is not needed, is in fact counterproductive, even actually destructive. Patience, belief in the goodwill of people and industries involved, confidence in human ingenuity, and the passage of time will do the trick. 50 years from now we'll be reading articles in the NYT about how CO2 production is back to historical levels. Pazienza, Pazienza.
2
@Ronald B. Duke No time for 'pazienza". We don't have decades; seas are rising and eating cities and the arctic is melting. How are we going to recover from this? Being Pollyanna isn't going to work.
2
@lee4713; You are exactly the kind of impatient activist we don't want making needed practical decisions. What is your plan for solving the problem? I'll bet you don't have one, you just want something done, and now! People like you are needed to ring the bell, but you can't be put in charge of the action plan.
2
The "wedges" analysis that you point readers to is totally out of date. CO2 emissions have to get to zero by 2045 at the latest for the temperature increase to possibly stay under 1.5 degrees C, and not much later to stay under 2.0 degrees C. The wedges analysis also includes technologies like CCS which are not a good idea for many reasons. It is much better just to eliminate the combustion of all fossil fuels in all end-uses of energy and all supplies of electricity.
Freon was the best substance as a coolant but not in anyway one that could not be replaced. In any text book on thermodynamics used by engineering students, the coolants offered were several besides Freon.
Climate change is due to the burning of hydrocarbons which ultimately reduces to carbon dioxide and water, all of them. Replacing this kind of energy system is a lot much more complicated than switching coolants.
Fixing man’s use of ozone reducing gases and man’s use of hydrocarbons are dissimilar propositions.
1
Science has already proven Climate change to be real, just like it did with CFCs destroying the ozone.
BUT.... there is an important context here....
"Congress in 1977 added protecting the ozone layer to the Environmental Protection Agency’s duties under the Clean Air Act." In other words... Congress took legislative action so that companies and special interests could not just obfuscate and ignore.
With climate change though.. the Republican party has adopted the stance that it either is not an issue, or something that is not an issue in the current Republican politicians life time.. so they just don't care. Trump has been very vocal at times about not caring about real issues that will not be materially felt until sometime after he has passed away (Trump self-intererst at it's most blatant).
Until complete control of Congress and the White House is taken away from Republicans.... climate change will simply not be addressed on the part of the US.
3
NYTs, your comparison of events is not valid aerosol sprays are a first world problem thus elimination was possible through the existing, and mostly stellar, education and media systems. CO2 emissions are a more global issue, reaching down to, and growing rapidly in third world countries. Many of these countries resent having to curtail their emissions, necessary for their economic growth, as a result of the first world's centuries old abuse (and benefits from) the same. I don't see anyone curtailing their use of CO2 emitting resources anytime soon.
1
"Compared with the manifold complexities of global warming, dealing with ozone depletion was, in fact, relatively simple."
Gee, compare elimination of a single class of chemicals used for a limited number of purposes, for which corporations in the same industry came up with alternatives in a few years to a problem that requires completely restructuring manufacture, locomotion, and also requires ending population growth.
We managed to get up at 7 this morning. Therefore that kind of drive and ability should mean that this evening we can run a marathon without training and win!
3
CFCs are not petroleum. Mankind has not had countless wars, brutal dictatorships, famine, oppression, and destruction over the control or use of CFCs. Not so for petroleum. Nice analogy though even though it's a bit far-fetched. I hope your dream comes true. I hope against hope that I am wrong.
1
Excellent article... but there is one reason for hope it does not mention: That the worlds largest Democracies will have to adopt clean technologies like electric cars, and renewable energy en mass to provide the standard of living their growing populations... billions of people aspiring to live better... will demand that. My community is powered by 100% renewable electricity, and the practice is growing where I live. The question is not IF we can do it, but WHY haven’t we done it already? It affordable. It’s available. It’s now.
2
Where are the democrats? This is an issue that most people can agree on. It should be front and center with all the democratic candidates. Instead of focusing on divisive issues that don't pull a huge number of people to a rallying call, democratic candidates go along with making this a side issue. As we witness more and more strange weather events that are affecting more people, I believe the democrats can secure their place in history as the party addressing this serious issue. The republican only obstruct with no solutions to anything. We have a president who could do so much for the cause, but completely scoffs at it. I hope we can turn the corner on this issue soon as there is almost a year of possible fires and floods and droughts and hurricanes and tornadoes that will affect many more Americans. America is the leader of the world, but our president has made us vanish from the scene as we waste precious time with his nonsense.
It all starts with leadership at the top. A JFK moon moment is required. Can't see that on the horizon in a second Trump term.
3
Yes, AGW can be fixed, but we must overcome the biggest flaws we as humans possess and they are both unconscious because we inherited them from evolution. Not surprisingly, both are related to survival. The first is that as individuals we think of ourselves first and foremost. Look at all the cars around you and think about who the owners we thinking of when they bought them. Future generations? The planet? No, themselves. And the other flaw we inherited is fear, really paranoia when you go the furthest right on the political spectrum. Conservatives deny AGW because they unconsciously relate it to government out to get them. The most common symptom of paranoia is the sense that everyone is out to get you which just about fully explains what differentiates conservatives from everyone else on the political spectrum. And since it is unconscious, they aren't even aware of it, heck, most people aren't. These two flaws are very difficult to overcome because we were born this way.
1
It might be possible to prevent the most catastrophic impacts of climate change if leadership was united in understanding the threat and committing to speed our transition from fossil fuel dependency. But the needed consensus is not likely to emerge in time.
1
These two problems, CFC production and CO2 production, can in no way be equated, because of both the scale of the production of the two, and the inevitability of CO2 production in agriculture and transportation, primarily.
Also, again pertaining to scale, is the enormity of ocean temperature rise, acidification, and the irreversible nature of permafrost thaw, both of which took at least a century to occur.
Especially persistent will be the permafrost problem...not only is it a vicious positive feedback mechanism, it is also impossible to refreeze it. The energy absorbed by the ice does not reveal itself in surface temperature measurements, but nonetheless accumulates in the ice, driving the phase change from solid to liquid. It would take decades of exceptionally cold winters to reverse this, and I think there is agreement that this will never happen. Meanwhile, the CO2 and methane release from that permafrost may equal or exceed ALL CO2 presently in the atmosphere. That outcome will of course accelerate the process and dwarf any human attempt at mitigation.
A study published yesterday from Madrid also shows ocean ecosystems collapsing from dead zones, now numbering 700+ areas in the world's oceans.
Comparing all this to the ozone hole, which covered a fraction of 5% of the world's land mass, is wishful thinking at it's most futile and simplistic level.
4
Follow the money.
Make production of co2 increasingly expensive, and dangle (e.g. incentivize on a massive scale) investment in clean technologies. Done with a modicum of intelligence and a massive shift in subsidies, capitalism (with appropriate regulation) can be counted on to work towards solve the problem. Ignore the money and we’re doomed.
In the mid 70s I had the privilege of taking Rates of Reactions physical chemistry class from Dr Rowland (though all he lectured on was atmospheric chemistry, the chain reaction of CFC attacking ozone in the stratosphere)
I'm in agreement with other commentators that ozone layer and climate change are very different problems. Here are a couple of things to think about:
1. Chemistry: CFCs was replaced, at significant expense, by HFCFs, a much less stable compound that decomposes in the atmosphere, not the stratosphere. The better comparison is the petroleum industry finding a substitute for lead in gasoline again at huge expense to the industry. I haven't seen an estimate for what it would cost to replace hydrocarbons but I'm guessing it would be several multiples beyond that of CFC or lead.
2. Human behaviour: Finding a hydrocarbon substitute(s) would mean some kind of lifestyle sacrifice on our part. Evidence is strong that we're not ready to make that kind of change, even those screaming mad about climate change.
3
The European Atmospheric Agency (CAM's) has concluded that the ozone improvement can not be linked to the Montreal Protocol because chlorine and bromine are still at the same concentrations in the atmosphere. (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49714987 ) This is directly measurable. They link the improvement of the ozone to a warming trend in the upper atmosphere. (there's irony for you - and evidence of weathers complexity). Does the author of this article have evidence to the contrary? I'd be interested to see it. But making leaps of causality does not benefit these discussions if that's what happened here. We should look at all the data, not just the parts we use to make inferences to support our individual beliefs.
1
That’s not true, Henry.
https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/climate/ozone-depleting-substances-and-climate-change/protecting-the-ozone-layer-while
They say that a) the actions against CFCs have largely worked, b) among the benefits is that CFCs are powerful greenhouse gasses, and c) there is some concern that the substitutes are also cintributing to warming.
Always go to the original source and read it carefully, okay?
1
This article is the first I have seen about our ozone's status since the '80s. My first thought was is that people don't care about "good news", so why to bother printing about it. Then it occurred to me that perhaps scientists were afraid to publicize it. Maybe they were fearful that the humans would feel the problem was solved and go back to the dangerous use of freon and other ozone crippling gases used in products like hairspray as propellents.
We as humans are extremely short-sighted... It's like the minute the Polar Bear is removed from the endangered species list, our governments will start issuing licenses to hunt for them.
1
I wish I could be so sanguine about doing anything that will begin to affect climate change. Every day there is yet another story about rapidly approaching feedback loops which will threaten everything we do.
Now is the time to act.
2
I’m not nearly so sanguine. We are in serious trouble, and will be even if we stopped producing carbon dioxide completely tomorrow. I would’ve like to see at least a mention of overpopulation. We have far too many people for the Earth to support, and since we don’t seem to have the will to reduce the population, nature will take care of that for us.
156
@T. Monk Thanks Monk, but we are indeed in the process of learning about population. Slow, yes, probably automatic at some levels, but yes, we are headed in that direction. Ironically, due to our intelligence, we do things very badly.
5
@T. Monk
This is interesting because population is considered 'over' when society fails to successfully contend with challenges created by increased population density. Cheap energy has been one driving factor enabling increased population. But now the side effect of cheap energy, CO2, is becoming a primary challenge indicating that the we are overpopulated.
4
@T. Monk I agree with you. Yet even advanced societies such as in Europe and Japan already face serious economic problems due to slowed population growth and an aging population . And in developing countries the poor often still depend on having children to help the family survive. Combine this with the climate crisis and it only makes things more dire over the next century.
8
As a high school teacher, I use the case of the ozone layer as a positive end note to the dismal realities of climate change. I believe another important factor in the ozone success story not mentioned by the author is at the consumer level - no user of hairspray or new refrigerator owner was inconvenienced by the change to non-CFC aerosols. (In fact, I bet few consumers were even aware their products had changed.) Few people will sacrifice for the greater good, especially when surrounded by others who are doing nothing. But if the climate-friendly product requires no sacrifice, or even change in behavior, and is all that is available, people will use it. The activist Ed Begley certainly was making a sacrifice driving converted-to-electric cars in 1970s L.A. But not so for my students whose families drive electric cars today.
I agree with the main thrust of this essay which is that we need to combat climate change NOW to lessen the impact of global warming. We now know that the temperature of earth will most likely rise 3 to 5 degrees C from preindustrial levels by 2100. The temperature might rise further after that leading to the eventual extinction of homo sapiens.
What troubles me is that the full panoply of mitigating actions is NOT discussed. If this is really an urgent problem, and I believe it is, we need to be exploring all actions which might help achieve lower levers of temperature rise, and mitigate the effects of warming.
One possibility that seems to be ignored is the potential role that nuclear energy might play. Yes it is risky. But new technologies might make fission reactors safer, and might eventually lead to fusion energy, which is likely to be as clean as solar and wind power.
The other point which the NY Times ignores is the impact of population growth. The effect of global warming will likely be to lower the carrying capacity of earth by making the tropics too hot for humans. Migrations will occur.
Under such circumstances it seems important to limit population growth for the planet as a whole. Consider the projections that Africa will double in population by 2050.
This along with a warming climate will likely cause much suffering in Africa. Why not mitigate that suffering?
Why not discuss policies that can encourage smaller families?
2
The world will never "solve the problem" of climate change without "solving the problem" of capitalism. As long as there is profit to be made by spoiling the environment, capitalists will continue to strip-mine the planet down to it's last green bean. We cannot confront climate change without first confronting the political systems that through their greed and corruption enable the polluters, planet-rapers, and science deniers.
4
The largest obstacle to solving climate change is recognition that human overpopulation, unsustainable (and inhumane) food and energy production and consumption, and failure to take responsibility for our own pollution are the root causes. Underlying the resistance to change is the conservative, religious right that delsuionally believes the fate of the world is controlled by a fictional deity who somehow has a master plan for the outcome. In summary, 'in god we trust' will be our planet's downfall. QED.
5
The forces arrayed against acknowledging climate change or doing anything about it are massive. The fossil fuel industry is the primary engine behind the entire worldwide economy, with the power to shape or destroy entire countries— not to mention individual politicians, witness the GOP in the U.S.— in every part of the earth. They will not give up their unimaginable wealth and unimaginable power willingly. This is not to say we should not do anything. But we cannot just tinker with small solutions without collectively focusing on and creating ways for the fossil fuel industry to participate or at least get out of the way.
2
Most of the commenters here are well-meaning but are not well-informed on the state of current technology, let alone on demographics. For example, the degradation of polymers by UV light, including sunlight, has been known for many years. The real issues are preventing more dumping into the oceans and harnessing sunlight to speed the degradation of what is there already. A process to convert methane (the major component of natural gas) into hydrogen, an excellent fuel, and elemental carbon, a good paving surface, has resulted in one start-up. Carbon may be good material for road pavement and/or tires and, in any case could be used to back fill at least some coal mines. As for overpopulation, most demographers expect peak population to occur at or before 2050. The emerging issue is what to do about an aging and ultimately declining population, as is already a problem in Japan and soon in will be in China and some European countries.
Yes, I know that I haven't discussed rising sea levels. But I live in a city that is about 750 feet above current sea level. It probably doesn't matter if it is 740 feet above in 20-30 years. Ann Arbor, like many inland cities ,is near to dying agricultural towns. A few tens of thousands of refugees from a drowning Florida might help revive them and similar inland towns elsewhere.
1
@Professor M In other words, NIMBY?
@lee4713
I don't have any objection to climate change refugees fleeing to Ann Arbor. The only problem I see is that they would be competing in a very expensive housing market. Much of the rental market is aimed at students, many of whom are able to pay top dollar for housing close to the University. The homeowner market is entirely different, but it too is dominated by housing aimed at fairly affluent professionals. Of course, if they are fleeing the Florida Keys or suburban Houston, that may not matter. A refugee family from Mar-a-lago might find adjustment to the local culture difficult.
I have to wonder at the thought process that equates the substitution of CFCs with alternative compounds - a relatively simple task in the grand scheme of things - to upending our entire way of life and replacing the energy source that is the foundation of our economies.
@Michael That the fossil fuel industry is the foundation of our economies is the problem, because continuing use of fossil fuels, absent a way to remove the greenhouse gases they produce, is the cause of the environmental degradation which will inevitably destroy our economies, & make our environment a very unpleasant place to live. We must figure out a way to wean ourselves away from those fossil fuels, & get our energy from other sources. This can't be impossible. In the past few years we've seen alternative energy-producing sources become ever more practicable & affordable. Give the solar, wind, etc industries the preferential government treatment the oil industry has enjoyed over the past century (e.g., the oil-depletion tax allowance) & they will only grow more robustly. We didn't progress from the stone age because we ran out of stones.
The right wing denied the ozone hole was caused by CFCs and claimed it was caused by volcanoes, denying the validity of scientific evidence just as it later did with global warming and continues to do so. There are technological fixes for many of the sources of greenhouse gases but not all sources. So far there are no technological fixes for such sources as planes, ships, ruminants such as cows, steel making, and cement making. And revamping most of the electrical grid, motor vehicle transportation, and heating of buildings would be challenging in the best of political circumstances. And it will take more than science, innovation, and international action. It will take action by every level of government, all types of businesses and institutions, and individuals. Addressing climate change is so much more difficult than addressing the ozone hole that the analogy doesn't hold. I don't believe there is any good analogy. Climate change is unique and like no other problem humans have ever dealt with. That is the way it should be approached.
3
Any discussion of climate change that fails to address the impact of human overpopulation has a hole in it. Just as we cannot continue to consume the planet's resources as though they were unlimited, our species cannot continue to grow in number without limitation, without consequence.
Climate change is not solely the byproduct of how we use energy, how we grow our food, how we travel, how we live our lives. It is also the product of HOW MANY of us there are using energy, consuming food, traveling, living our lives.
Currently, there are some 7.7 billion of us occupying the planet. By 2050, that number is projected to increase by 2 billion. All those extra people will need to use energy, consume food, travel, and live their lives. All those extra people will have their own carbon footprints to leave upon the Earth and its climate. How is any of this sustainable?
Humankind is facing an uncomfortable reckoning. Climate change is not the problem. We are.
11
Except how much we consume is a far bigger driver of the climate crisis than how many of us there are.
3
@David J. - umh, I was with you down to the last two sentences. It's not "either/or." It's both climate change AND over-population.
@David J. One of the things I dislike about the climate change orthodoxy is that it has resurrected the Church of Thomas Malthus, Patron Saint of Population Control.
Don't count out human innovation.
1
"The same tools that fixed the ozone hole — science, innovation and international action — can address it."
Surely you jest. This is Trump's America. We no longer use science, advance innovation or (heaven forbid) engage in international action.
We reject analysis, wallow in nostalgia for the past (and big toilet bowls) and consider ourselves so great again that the rest of world solely exists to serve us.
I look at an empty National Mall and wonder where are the millions of citizens rising up clamoring for Congress and the President to act intelligently to address the growing climate crisis. They're back at home updating their Facebook pages and adding to the inanities on Twitter instead.
There is no national, much less global, consensus to do anything but sit and watch the temperatures and water levels rise.
6
Ozone was replaced by another coolant. The change was rather easy. Replacing coal or natural gas fired electriciy generating power plants. hydrocarbon powered autos and hydrocarbon powered home heating will be economically painful, and so anything but easy.
4
@toom
Get back to us when you convince India of this + China, together are 3+ billion of the planet's 7.6 billion human bloat. Russia's Siberian coal mining deals with India and China are right now a crisis.
See: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50507539
1
Removing and substituting CFCs was a relatively easy task versus calls to upend entire economies, bankrupt entire industries and the designating of winners and losers from central planners.
For Americans, who as Andrew Yang pointed out in a debate, account for only about 15% of world carbon output, many of the demands by the climate hysterics economically impact the lower and middle classes disproportionately. In fact the entire enterprise of the "there is no Planet B" crowd drips of an upper class, privileged view of society, that they know best and that means others must change their lives. Watching a group of these folks protest near my place of work last week, I couldn't help notice the high use of cell phones, designer coats and sweaters as well as the freedom to protest in the middle of the day instead of working.
45
@Chris By "climate hysterics", you mean the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, the Pentagon, Bank of England, International Energy Agency, thousands of climate scientists around the world, and so on? Yes indeed, true radicals all of them.
Pointing out that people still use oil and plastic does nothing to help your argument either. We are fighting for a world in which we don't need to use these products (nearly as much). We have the technologies and the solutions to solve this problem now. We just need to implement them. Get on board or get out of the way.
49
@Chris As a devil's advocate, you presented the case where climate hysterics are wrong and ruining an economy. Ignoring validating the economic point, what if the contrary was true - climate hysterics are right and ruining the economy. Wouldn't the moral divide be a question of consequences of ignoring climate concerns? Now add the ambiguity of whether or not introducing new fuel efficient technology hurts an economy and I'm left to wonder the merit of inaction. Instead of characterizing the movement (and getting stuck in a game of logic and intentions), we should instead be focused on the consequences circulating the debate and ways we can innovate (which has accounted for most of America's economic success).
13
@Chris wrote: "In fact the entire enterprise of the "there is no Planet B" crowd drips of an upper class, privileged view of society, that they know best and that means others must change their lives. "
I completely agree here.
Climate change is a low priority, and probably always will be, for those living paycheck to paycheck, which many people even here in the United States-- anyone who doubts this look at the number of people who couldn't come up with several dollars or an emergency or unexpected car repair bill.
It's easy to tell people to drive less or give up their cars completely when you live in an walkable area with good mass-transit. The majority of people in this country do not live in such areas and can't afford to, even if they wanted to.
Climate change all to often comes across, fairly or not, as the 1% telling the 99% to accept less and is a major reason climate change is a losing issue.
10
The cause of ozone depletion was relatively straightforward and there were alternative chemicals available to mitigate. Carbon dioxide production is many hundred fold different and more complex. Nevertheless, the gist of the opinion is correct, that the solution lies in following the science. Unfortunately, with imbecile leaders like trump and bolsonaro, et. al., and entrenched interests of the petroleum industry, propaganda and outright lies from fake news purveyors such as America's FOX, the science cannot scream loud enough to reach the tone-deaf population.
3
Wishful thinking. There is little to no comparison between the ozone problem and climate change. Our economy, lifestyle, food suppply and on and on are all tied to using and burning hydrocarbons. It's the difference between having to change deodorants and not driving. Americans want climate change solved. They don't want to give up their lifestyle, conveniences or pay for it. When you throw in the developing countries are going to develop as fast as they can and that's going to happen with hydrocarbons and you get exactly what we have. CO2 rising higher and at a faster rate all the time. We love to blame trump and the oil companies, but it's really us. Throw in the fact that the elephant in the room, human over population ( the major driving force of all these problems), can't even be discussed on a national level for PC reasons, and we are doomed.
106
@Al France has a pretty high standard of living and emits about a quarter as much CO2 per capita as the US, as does most of Europe.
9
@PGH
Excellent points. However, France is also 18 x smaller than the US. We are fortunate that we have open space and some wilderness left. The downside is to see, enjoy it or even get around it, you often need a vehicle. Europe is crowded and most of the open space and wild lands are gone. They often come here to see what they have crowded out with people. We need to figure out how to save what we have and get people out to enjoy it without making everything worse. Given the car culture of the US and the logistics it won't be easy.
2
@Al What most activists are demanding that we do will NEVER occur...that's the unfortunate truth. Last week the NYT reported that Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, set the price of its initial public offering at a level that would raise $25.6 billion, a sum that is expected to make it the world’s biggest I.P.O. Does anyone think for a billionth of a second that the Saudi's, the Nigerians or anyone else in OPEC is going to stop drilling for oil? It's NEVER going to happen in our lifetime. NEVER. Every ounce ...and I mean every ounce is coming out of the ground into our cars and factories. Oil is the source of Saudi Arabia's power. The kingdom relies on oil revenue to pay for its massive domestic & military spending. Just to break even, Saudi Arabia needs a pump as much oil as possible. Production cuts would force Saudi Arabia to drain its shrinking pile of cash, borrow money or scale back dividends paid by Aramco. According to CNN oil output from non-OPEC countries is expected to surge by a record 2.3 million barrels per day in 2020. That would easily top the previous record of 1.96 million sets in 1978. The US shale oil revolution is the biggest contributor to the coming gush of oil. US production is expected to climb by another 1.1 million barrels per day in 2020. Norway & Brazil are also expected to add a combined 1 million barrels per day of oil production next year. Canada & Guyana are poised for growth as well. That's our reality. That's our future.
8
To fix the ozone problem, we changed the chemical that we use in our refrigerators. Some manufacturers objected, but we developed a different chemical, and they're still making refrigerators.
To fix C02 we need to reverse two of the fundamental forces that drive the economy: fuel production and population growth. And we need to do so over the objections of the most powerful people on Earth.
As usual, we have dallied until the problem is almost intractable, so minor tweaks and incremental changes won't get it done. We're already doing that, and it isn't nearly enough.
86
@mlbex In a perfect world, I would agree with the NYT 100%. But we live in an imperfect world. It is incumbent on us as responsible adults to decide what is doable and what isn't. The lofty goals activists are demanding aren't unachievable in a democratic society. Not in a country like ours where voters don't have an appetite for more economic sacrifice. Millions of people are one paycheck away from being in dire economic straits. They won't tolerate higher gas taxes. I've heard people say that if it's too expensive to commute, people will have to live closer to their work. But people are moving further away from economic centers because the cost of housing in urban areas is unaffordable. The far left by proposing a high carbon tax are trying to make their way to work unaffordable as well. Low wage earners spend a lot to fill their cars & trucks up. For most mass transit isn't an option. Thoughtless politicians that want a carbon tax rarely think of the poor & the hardship it will cause them. I find it interesting that the Democratic left is calling for the exact kind of tax that the French are up in arms against. What's happening in France has made many reconsider this notion. No one accepts the way progressives are framing the issue which is why they aren't getting any political traction. The left is basically saying fight climate change OUR way or all life on Earth will perish. No one is buying it. This will be a very slow process that will require a lot of adaptation.
4
@Bill Brown: Like you say, several countries have tried to raise fuel prices, and they've all had riots and backed down. Housing inflation has forced people into longer commutes, and mass transit only works in places like New York where the end traffic is concentrated in a small area.
So I agree with your assessment of the political and practical reality. The leaders won't give up their privileges, the rank and file can't get by with less, and the population keeps growing. That's why I think we're going to have a few more decades of more-of-the-same followed by a crash, and warfare over the scraps.
If we picked the right leaders, developed the right changes to society and tech, and got everyone on board without beggaring the people at the bottom, we'd have a moderate chance of avoiding all of that.
The Left doesn't have the answer, but they're asking the right questions.
5
@mlbex
Simply put.... if the people do not deal with the issue, the planet will... and people will die... in the billions if it ends up that way.
But 1st world nations are going down the path of... it's not our problem... it's a 3rd world problem... just like they ALWAYS do.
The US carbon foot print per capita is the largest on the planet.. yet the US position is to ignore that face, contribute noting in reducing per capita foot print.. and put all the blame and demand on other nations.
The US.. at this pace and approach to negligence.... deserves everything that happens to it over the next 50-100 years.
6
Well-meant but wishful thinking. Even with all the best and well-meaning solutions deployed, humans will continue to populate the Earth, plunder its resources, and add pollutants to the air.
Consider that even if everyone accepts very stringent carbon emission standards, the growing global demand for meat continues to expand methane emissions, which molecule for molecule are worse than fossil fuel emissions. Many of the same people who demonize the fossil fuel industry are also hearty consumers of flesh foods, or extravagant users of heat in the winter, or own 6,000 sq. ft. homes.
The whole world needs to understand how we need to alter our lifestyles to save the planet. As of now there is no sign that this is true, and the USA is the leader in denial. Yet historically it has produced more accumulated carbon and methane emission than any other country.
In other words, one a person-to-person basis, the USA still leads the world in polluting the atmosphere, and will continue to be through the foreseeable future.
6
@ernieh1
The 2nd and 3rd world is where the pollution is, especially of the air, and where there are the most humans doing the polluting - who have no intention of curtialing their numbers or their toxicity of planet Earth.
1
If only climate change was as straight-forward as the ozone hole. Sadly, the rate of CO2 and other gasses being spewed into the atmosphere is increasing. Deforestation of the planet's rain forests is increasing, and 3700 sq. miles of the Amazon were burned just last year.
A recent poll in CA. showed that climate change is the #1 issue for California Democrats. Our current president is taking us in the exact opposite direction, pandering to the "drill, baby, drill" crowd.
I really appreciate Jane Fonda's op-ed this week. Without U.S. leadership on this issue, there is no hope. When sea level rise begins to consume Mar-a-Lago, maybe he'll start to take notice.
3
This thinking is entirely wrong.
The model created by the ozone issue was one in which solutions lay in business-led technological innovation and the implementation of a market-based system of emissions permits enforced by binding international law: the 1987 Montreal Protocol.
This precedent was on an entirely more manageable scale than climate change. The number of actors involved in both the issues of ozone depletion and acid rain were very small—a mere 25 power utilities and 110 plants were involved in the Acid Rain program. Twelve companies and their subsidiaries accounted for the vast majority of the production of ozone-depleting chemicals—a quarter of global production was by DuPont alone. The CEOs of all these companies could comfortably have attended the same cocktail party. What is more, the damage caused by ozone depletion and acid rain could, after the pollution was controlled, be reversed within a generation. These issues created an optimistic narrative of resolution and renewal that was entirely inappropriate for the irreversible and open-ended problem of climate change.
We’ve defined climate change as an environmental issue and not a resource, an energy, an economic, a health, or a social rights issue. The UN decided it would be best managed via emissions trading, and not through regulation, taxation, and rationing, and glowing from the success of its process to prevent ozone depletion, through international protocol vs regional or multilateral agreements.
3
If Earth had only one billion humans, technological means might be able to control global warming. But, with seven billion, the rate of climate change, caused by just normal human activities, may be too rapid to mitigate.
85
@MCBZB Depends on your definition of "normal human activities".
Obviously, human behaviour is difficult to change.
It helps to be optimistic.
6
@MCBZB The science on climate change is settled, but the politics isn't. The GOP is disingenuous when they deny the science, but let's be honest the Democrats are even more disingenuous when they deny the cost. Cap & Trade, carbon taxes, etc. are politically dead in the water. They're not happening. American voters (as well as people in other nations) simply don't want to pay more for energy. Bottom line. We & (the world) will continue to use fossil fuels for the foreseeable future no matter what happens. Maybe less but still in massive amounts. It's baked into our energy grid. It can't & won't be eliminated overnight. That will take decades at best. Even though our governments now subsidize clean-power sources, efficient cars, buildings, we continue to rip as much oil, coal & gas out of the ground as possible. And if our green policies mean there isn't a market for these fuels at home, then no matter they will be exported instead. The US is extracting carbon & flowing it into the global energy system faster than ever before. For years we've tried to simultaneously reduce demand for fossil fuels while doing everything possible to increase the supply. More efficient engines enable more people to drive more cars over greater distances, triggering more road building, more trade & indeed more big suburban houses that take more energy to heat. Can we bring ourselves to prioritize renewables over cheap fuels, power, convenient goods & services? We all know the answer is no.
2
@MCBZB
"If Earth had only one billion humans, technological means might be able to control global warming."
Depends on whether those 1B live like the average Earthling or like Americans. If the latter, things would be far worse.
2
"It can save climate change."
No, it can't. The desire for humans to view technology as the ultimate savior is simply wrong-headed and the height of hubris.
What science is going to stop Brazil from burning the rain forests? What technology will stop the ever-increasing forest and bush fires around the world? And what science-based solution will unite the ever-more fractious nation states, headed by despots, who are only for their own personal aggrandizement?
No. I don't buy it. The die is cast.
7
@Clyde
True. No politician in this country is even suggesting anything near what is needed to get us out of this. One need only look at what happened to jimmy carter in 1980 when he suggested conservation was needed in the face of the oil shock. A massive landslide. And not in his favor.
3
This is an extremely concise and thorough summery of the issue. Of course one issue is overlooked as always in such coverage- so I will keep bringing it up.
There is lots of media coverage lamenting the drop of birth rates in developed wealthy nations, but here is an inconvenient truth rarely discussed.
Every day 360 thousand new human consumers and environmental polluters are born on our shrinking planet while only 150 thousand die.
Can we please make this an integral element of discussions about global warming? There is a lot our government could be doing to encourage birth control in developing nations where most of this increase in occurring, which is damaging to their economies and political stability anyway. Population reduction is a win-win for everyone not reaping profits from expanding markets.
8
And our government does, whenever we don’t have some fool like Trump in office.
2
My vote in the elections of 2020 will be based upon two things: A strong commitment to solving the climate issue and an end to endless war. I do not care which party, sex, or color of the candidate. Sure, there are many other problems but if these two issues are not solved all the other problems will become pointless.
5
If only you could tell this to the rest of North Carolina, many ills of our society could be solved. Easily.
2
All my life people have had two basic responses to the harm we humans have inflicted on this planet: either some god, or science, will fix everything.
Both make it easy to say it's someone else's problem, someone else's worry. Both are dangerously wrong.
Moreover, "fixing" climate change does nothing to address the continued encroachment of humanity on all natural habitat and the tremendous loss of non-human life over the past 50 years alone. It does zero to address the root cause: human overpopulation. And that will never be addressed as long as half the world considers breeding to be a mandated religious or nationalist moral imperative and that life and death issues are beyond their control.
8
World wide action to protect humans beings, flora and fauna from the sun's fearsome radiation isn't on the global table today. Fact; chlorofluorocarbons are air-conditioning Florida in 2019, while northern parts of the US are using fossil fuel heat to combat an incipient ice-age and warm American flesh and bones. We're witnessing climate catastrophe happening on Earth today.
Global action to protect our planet is urgently needed. President Jair Bolsonaro doesn't agree. He is decimating the rain forests of Brazil which produce oxygen from earth's carbon dioxide, by killing trees to bolster Brazil's economy. Apocalyptic change is occurring right now as we countries squabble over borders, nationalism and lines on paper that mean zip.
The industrial revolution and human use of fossil fuels and life-extinguishing chemicals have put paid to action against global warming on Earth. Clean air and clean water are beyond the reach of peoples in countries undergoing climate change, floods, intense heat and the curses of Mother Nature. Belt-tightening and stopgap measures to combat climate change aren't going to work now or tomorrow to save our planet.
3
Ozone was first reported end 60s when our global population was around 3 billion, and it became problematic circa 1980 when we were just over 4 billion. We are now heading at a disastrous rate towards 8 billion. The sooner we start understanding how much more difficult everything will be to change or « fix » things with too many people, the better.
4
@Broman
Thank you. Be sure and mention that to our "enlightened" democratic hopefuls. As the informed, Numbers, fact based party they will sure embrace an honest discussion about population. Oh wait...
1
I suggest that the best hope for Homo sapiens to come out of this carbon-dioxide "curtain of death" is to reduce human population of planet Earth to half or less of that today. And simultaneously to reduce the expected standard of living. There are simply now too many people wanting/demanding too many things.
8
Fortunately billionaires like Bill Gates are using their massive wealth for "humanitarian aid" to ensure that diseases like HIV and malaria are cured, thereby allowing places in Africa to continue to overpopulate the planet and hasten our collective demise.
1
I have a proposal for continuously removing gigatonnes of CO2 from the South Pacific Ocean and in doing so, reducing not only the acidity of the ocean but also reducing atmospheric CO2. Achieving this would be no more difficult than the effort that was required to reverse the damage to the ozone layer. It will require much international cooperation and it will require the South Pacific Ocean becoming a marine park.
The method of removing the CO2 would be growing a vast free-floating kelp forest ecosystem between New Zealand and South America and the key to growing this is individual bamboo kelp buoys. The kelp buoys carry the iron minerals required by the growing kelp plants and also assist the juvenile kelp plants to stay afloat. ( To save the planet, it will also be necessary within the foreseeable future to include the Southern Ocean and the Arctic Circle into kelp growing regions.) These additional areas also becoming marine parks. The fishing industries evolving into park management, kelp growing, kelp harvesting, and large scale aquaculture projects. These transitional phases will need to be funded by the United Nations and the World Bank.
The full proposal can be viewed using the link below,
https://southpacificmarinepark.com/
Kind regards,
Geoffrey Peel, Auckland, New Zealand.
7
First things first. The major problem today is people flushing 10 to 15 times. Thankfully the EPA is looking into that strongly.
3
Global Warming Climate Change destruction has one giant size overwhelming problem.
The Heat in the Pipeline.
100 Years of Heat.
And we cannot stop that.
Change today takes 100 years to work.
So for the next 100 years we are going to suffer all the negative consequences and hope for 2120 so warming starts reversing.
1
So the Times ‘hopes’ that folks are now paying attention enough so...some unnamed action will happen. Because we solved another problem in the past. So vague it’s meaningless - but thanks for the pep talk.
2
“From a fundamental biophysical perspective, both prehistoric human evolution and the course of history can be seen as the quest for controlling greater stores and flows of more concentrated and more versatile forms of energy...“ Vaclav Smil, Energy and Civilization“
This one‘s going to be harder than ozone.
2
This is so naive and blind. The scope of reforms needed to "solve climate change" is so much bigger than what was needed for the ozone layer. It has nothing to do with science, technique or data. It is a HUMAN problem.
At the macro scale, the interests of big governments are increasingly clashing, which itself is sure to augment global warming. Huge corporations, degenerate religions, dictators, political cliques and mafias have now as much power to influence policies as the frail minority of world leaders and organizations who favor the welfare of nature, and thus the human race.
At the other end of the scale, the expectations, values, behavior and daily decisions of a vast majority of mankind must be redirected towards the common good instead of the self-gratification and consumerism that have been the winning trend for centuries. Those saying that capitalism, democracy, and a livable environment can persist together are either lying or fooling themselves. One has to go, and obviously, it's capitalism. In view of the current trends prevailing from the UN to the single individual, it will not happen without chaos, world war and misery.
2
One very important difference between then and now is the gift from the irresponsible SCOTUS that keeps on giving; Citizens United. Politicians are bought and paid for by huge special interests, and big money facilitates spreading absolute, bald faced lies. The climate change deniers are a prime example. The Koch Brothers going into cities like Nashville and killing public transit projects around the country is another. We need to reimpose the fairness doctrine so broadcasts masquerading as news, like FOX News, so they provide equal time to the nonsense spew. We will need to make progress on getting big money out of politics and requiring honest journalism while we also tackle climate change.
3
There is a vast difference between identifying a narrow range of threats and acting upon them and the crisis we face now where the damage is being done by the very fuel that capitalism depends on.
Add to that the incredible lack of leadership from the US (in fact the opposite) and I don't see how the 2 situations can be compared at all.
Of course we always have that hero Greta Thunberg to show the powers that be what real commitment looks like. You know, the 16-year old that the ignoramus trump has dismissed.
@Plennie Wingo
It is amazing to me that certain groups of people think Greta Thunberg is some sort of "threat".
Nope, the time to solve it has past. At best the world can now try to manage climate change.
2
No wonder people are confused on global warming and climate change. This article could have been written by the fossil fuel industry; it's the "Don't worry, there are technological solutions to decrease CO2 from entering the atmosphere."
You are comparing apples and oranges, the ozone problem with the increasing use of fossil fuels and increasing CO2 in the atmosphere.
You want to decrease the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Here is another solution, kill off 7 billion people. The technology is already in place for that.
2
You can be sure that the fossil fuel industry had a pre-notice of this being published and you will see bots answering all the angles right off, to head off the genuine responses.
Let us face it, it is FOSSIL FUELS OR HUMANS. Take your pick but you can't have both. I really don't want to be an alarmist but the decimation of forests, loss of oxygen in the oceans, runaway births has done in the ability of Mother Earth to sustain it all.
The really big money knows that humans are going to someday realize this and soon, but even then, it may be too late so the richest are trying to cash out as much as possible now. The Saudis are trying to get the world to buy into its future returns on its fossil fuels so that the world, not just the Saudi nation is united to keep their money investment paying off. That is the real story on Aramco going public, rich people don't ever go against their pocket books, not even if suicide of the masses is the result.
So the real job for thinking people is how to keep so many people and groups from buying into the Saudi plot to offload the coming damage to all humanity because the damages are surely coming, taking it from private to public, ask NSW Australia how it feels to be in the crosshairs of an unstoppable fire? We may have already missed our last “able to save us” wake up call.
Greta Thunberg & the kids are right, we may have cashed in their life with a future cards.
3
Solve? Really? That’s ridiculous, slow down, possibly. And can we agree that plastic pollution must be mentioned in any climate change discussion? We are FAR past the tipping point and big oil is increasing production by 40%. Why are there no protests to stop this heinous, life threatening act?
3
Um, no. Connecting the dots between mechanisms to address the ozone issue and CO2 emissions is an errand for fools. Two entirely different sources that affected two entirely different aspects of society. CO2 is directly correlated to energy and transportation issues. The ozone killers (volatile organic compounds) were not so central to society's heartbeat. This article reminds me of the folks who squawk "...if we can put a man on the moon, we can (fill in the progressive societal issue de jour)". Total nonsense.
While I accept most of the science, I reject the alarmist doomsday scenario. We are not all going to die in 10 or 12 years. Having traveled the world, we cannot and should not Commit economic suicide with the outrageous green new deal in our country when China India Vietnam Indonesia, etc. are emitting more greenhouse gases than the rest of the world combined. There is a theory that we should encourage fossil fuel use in order to get these third world countries into prosperity where they will have fewer children and accumulate the funds necessary to fightPollution. Under President Obama, China agreed to start looking at the problem in 2024. What a joke!
Economic winners and losers will be decided by the companies themselves. Businesses that turn a blind eye to climate change will die out, and companies that embrace clean energy will win.
Oil companies spend billions of dollars a year on digging for oil and gas. If they spent that money instead on clean energy, they would be world leaders.
It's not governments picking winners and losers.
the big difference is that back then politicians didn't tell us that China caused the ozone problem.
1
It's the number one threat to literally everything -- 1a or b to nuclear weapons' 1b or a, that is -- and we've known for at least half a century. And done nothing, effectively. We know, like we know anything else in physics, that total disaster is the resting state if we do nothing. And we're doing worse than nothing: we're making it worse.
Keep this in mind when you choose a candidate. HRC was on Howard Stern: her top three priorities for her first 100 days were: 1. shore up the ACA, extend it; 2. get judges in; 3. "do something about immigration which is ripping this country apart." Considering her comments on EU migrants, we can imagine what she means, but the point is this: do you see global warming on that list? Do you see ending the new nuclear arms race and reinstituting serious arms control on that list? Let alone a fast path to Global Zero?
Nope. And the beautifully Manolo-ed, supposedly "progressive" Pelosi, when you can set aside the adulation and hysteria about her, takes time out to literally make fun of "The Green New Dream" and so on. Oh, how funny.
Sanders 2020. The necessary but far, far, far from sufficient first step to trying to forestall fascismo-genic (as well as omnicidal) climate catastrophe and the wars that will inevitably follow.
If that's "utopian," then we're all finished with this little "civilization" thing we've been doing for some time. Possibly even with the species itself.
Oh, there's plenty of denialism out there. Hardly just Trump.
I just don't see China or India willing to do anything about this.
1
This is not an issue of "climate change", it is an issue concerning "man made global warming". Repubilans popularized the term "climate change" in order to deflect from that fact that humans are the cause of this problem and, therefore, are responsible for its solution or its consequences.
Thank you for pointing out the irony! Climate scientist were correct about the ozone layer. They were correct about acid rain. Clearly they must be wrong about global warming. Not!
1
Face facts:
Climate change cannot begin to be solved when the most powerful man in the world exposes his level of understanding by stating this:
... “for the most part, you have many states where they have so much water that it comes down. It’s called rain. They don’t know what to do with it.”
Yes, that is correct stable genius, President Trump.
When water comes down, it's called rain.
Now let's review what we call the stuff we breathe...it's called air.
So in response I hope to see more articles in the NYT, and else where, on efforts being undertaken by groups, scientists & communities who are seeking those solutions along side articles that highlight the problems of climate change.
This would go a long way to inspiring people to understand and strive for solutions rather than feed the sense of helpless when only the immense problems are discussed.
1
Why was the ozone problem so much easier to solve than global warming? On one hand, we were asking the chemical industry to produce a different product. On the other hand, we are asking the fossil fuel industry to stop producing altogether, and with a huge treasury from accumulated profits and decades of generous tax treatment, they are able to fight for their existence on many fronts. Solution: push them to drill and frack for a different liquid that lies beneath us- hot water. Geothermal power can become competitive with other renewables and is something that the shareholders can buy into.
45
@Debbie Great point... businesses that objected to having to conserve energy now save billions annually because of it, and we all reap the environmental benefits. We can and should do the same with climate change. Those that reference “climate hysterics” either are not aware of history, or simply choose to believe in alternative facts.
4
@Debbie With the ozone issue... it was single cause single solution... simply remove the offending chemicals from circulation and replace them with a non-ozone degrading alternative.
Climate change... just like climate itself is complex, with many interacting factors at play. Weather prediction in climate is a great illustration of this... in spite of all the improvements in weather forecasting, and use of computerized models... it is still difficult to do accurately... (see hurricane route predictions and size prediction as just one example of this at play).
5
@Debbie
Geothermal is used where it is tappable by energy producers. But it tends to be very localized and limited for a reason.
Problem is.. there are huge parts of the US with no easily accessible geothermal sources.
Hawaii can tap as much geothermal sources as it likes and in fact is doing so and plans to be carbon neutral in a decade as a result.
Texas though... no real geothermal sources... and Texans love their oil.
2
The ozone problem was a problem detected and defined by scientists in the past and fixed. The germane question is, If it were a problem detected and defined by scientist today, would it be fixed? The Ed Board seems to assume that the answer is, Yes, of course it could be fixed; by using the same approach used them. I'm not at all sure that's any assurance.
1
Why can’t the world unite around changing the trajectory of devastating climate change? If our world was being attacked by aliens from outer space to destroy our planet and all human life, we would have a public outcry and band together to fight for our lives. Climate change essentially is a similar threat, but we are ignoring it. Those leaders who actively fight against ameliorating the effects of climate change should be removed from office.
2
I'm sorry, but this editorial isn't scientifically accurate and is a imbued with the same kind of techno-utopian thinking that got us into this mess.
I notice that manmade climate change is all that ever gets mentioned, while the bigger problem, anthropogenic mass extinction, is almost never mentioned.
Even if fossil fuels did not create greenhouse gasses that change climate, extracting, refining, and burning them poisons the land, air, and water.
Even if manmade climate change wasn't happening, our species would still be eating up native ecosystems, flora and fauna at a relentlessly increasing rate, erasing biodiversity and the web of life.
Another thing rarely mentioned by politicians and mainstream pundits: human population overshoot and increase--the main drivers of anthropogenic mass extinction.
Technology will not save us. A total change in how humans view themselves, the biosphere and other species is the only thing that could.
4
A lot more can and should be done, but some of the most important will take years to have an effect.
The wealthier and more industrialized nations need to provide strong incentives to reverse the catastrophic deforestation taking place in Asia and South America.
Next, we need to get over the delusion that everything can be done with wind and solar. Moreover, these technologies come with serious environmental and health costs that are hidden in China and Africa where mining of rare earth metals and cobalt is done under conditions approaching slave labor.
We know how to build nuclear power plants that are safer than the aged ones we keep running and much, much safer than burning coal. The most serious radioactive waste problems can be eliminated by recycling the fuel, as France does. The rest is not worse than the huge reservoirs of coal ash we still have to deal with. The countries with the expertise to build safe nuclear power plants, should also provide them (and the fuel) to developing countries so they don't burn coal. This will require a major international cooperative effort.
Another important tool is waste to energy conversion, i.e, burn trash that cannot be recycled.
Of course, nuclear is NOT a panacea. It is one part of the solution to a complex problem along WITH (not instead of) better use of wind and solar, as well limited use of hydroelectric power, waste-to-energy conversion, and energy conservation measures.
1
Oh. We should institute Obama’s energy plan, in other words.
The big obstacle to addressing climate is the massive amount of money and political power that depends on doing nothing at all, or even making it worse. That’s the problem we have yet to solve.
Consider New York State. Superstorm Sandy demonstrated how vulnerable the state is to climate events. Ditto for the 2019 Halloween deluge in upstate. Governor Cuomo has announced zero carbon goals for the state, and is promoting offshore wind.
But, as the Sierra Club is pointing out, 36% of state greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation and Cuomo is doing nothing about that. The new Tappan Zee Bridge did not include a rail option; restoring passenger service to the West Shore with that connection would have made a real difference.
There are new passenger stations across the state between Albany and Buffalo - yet the Cuomo administration is years behind the planning process to improve passenger service to those stations, or invest in new engines and cars to better serve them.
Cuomo is investing heavily in a statewide trail system, ripping out rail lines for rail trails - committing the state to car-based tourism and removing the ability to take trucks off the roads by using rail wherever possible. Preliminary calculations from Solutionary Rail estimate it takes 3 times as much energy to move goods by truck versus train.
Investing in rail would be one way to see real gains in the climate crisis and other issues. Let’s do it.
see more at: www.solutionaryrail.org/video
A fundamental difference between saving the ozone layer and ending climate change is the relative volumes of each problem.
In 1987, global sales of CFCs were 700,000 metric tonnes. Because nearly all of it was used to replace CFCs which had been discarded or leaked to the atmosphere, we can use that number as a suitable approximation of CFC emissions.
In 2018, global fossil fuel CO2-equivalent emissions were 37 billion metric tonnes - 53,000 times greater. Because CO2's detrimental effect on climate is the same, whether the result of burning natural gas, coal, or oil, ending the combustion of fossil fuel is the only answer.
Nuclear energy offers the only viable replacement, with the scalability and economy to get the job done. Statistically the safest way to generate grid electricity, it's being resisted due to high-profile accidents, the consequences of which were infinitesimally small compared to the damage climate change is already wreaking upon our terrestrial environment.
Claims that nuclear energy isn't "economical" have no statistical basis, either. Total revenue from the sale of uranium last year was $2.8 billion, roughly three orders of magnitude less than that from fossil fuel.
Besides public perception, the problem with nuclear energy is not that it's uneconomical, but that it's too economical - it doesn't burn enough fuel. And there is no technological fix, no magic bullet which can solve climate change while $trillions in profit are standing in the way.
3
I think you are overlooking the principal objection that many of us have to nuclear power - we don’t fully trust the industry to maintain plants in a fully safe condition as they near the end of their lifecycles, and to clean them up at the end. We have seen too many examples in other industries where manufacturers walked away from their responsibilities and massive litigation was needed to bring them back. Carrying such a responsibility isn’t quite compatible with the needs of a large corporation in our society. Perhaps an adequate performance bond would guaranty cleanup by the company or a third party. I suspect such a bond might price nuclear power out of the market.
Please show us why wind, solar, and geothermal power, coupled with modern low-loss transmission and plentiful storage technologies couldn’t scale to meet our needs. If you can do that, then we can give fission another look.
The Montreal Protocol and other agreements related to addressing the impact of ozone depleting substances on the earth's ozone layer are the most successful environmental treaties -- and in my book the most successful global treaties on any subject. They are based on excellent science and require something of every country; there are no free riders, although there are mechanisms to help countries that need financial assistance to meet their treaty commitments.
The Ozone treaties are an excellent model for solving other global challenges that stem from complex technologies or other human actions and there are a number of areas where they should be replicated today, the most urgent being climate change. The difference between the early international negotiations on the ozone and layer and today is that the ozone and all humanity benefited from U.S. political leadership then, whereas now the U.S. has not only abdicated its leadership role, it is acting in ways that are scientifically, economically (in the long run), and morally indefensible. The oil and coal companies may be happy about the Trump Administration's retreat on climate, but future generations in America and around the globe will curse Trump and his ilk even as they struggle to deal with an environment that will be increasingly hostile to human life as we know it today. But I bet they will have glass bottom boat tours of Mar-A-Largo to remind everyone of how it all went wrong -- and who was responsible.
4
The MEN who now govern the nations that produce the largest amounts of CO2 planet killers couldn’t care less if their children and grandchildren suffer as a consequence. They care about “profit and/or progress” as they define it. Whether the government is democratic or autocratic makes little difference.
If the legislators are predominantly men there will be little or no legislative action until the effects of global warming cost more (in health care and weather damage to infrastructure etc.) than they are prepared to absorb. This is one way to curb the surplus population but that’s not their problem as they see it. They don’t cause that either!
3
Remedying climate change means attacking the fossil fuel industry, not just a few chemical companies. Good luck with that. Oh sure the fossil fuel executives and even the Saudis will recognize climate change, but their reaction is likely to be buying real estate in Yellow Knife.
2
US chemical companies profited from selling CFC substitutes. Government and business interests had some alignment to address the ozone problem. It’s not quite the same story today, is it?
1
I, and millions of others agree - our history of doing bad things to our planet and then righting them can work. But let's not kid our self, this president and it's minions are doing everything to reverse course to the bad old days. Thank you for the reminder.
3
If China leads the way scientifically in this field then they will gain the respect of the rest of the developed world, because the USA has already lost goodwill by not signing the International climate change agreement. And the Republicans have cut back on funding for Research and Development. The future is in environmentally friendly inventions. There's even USA Nasa partnerships with NZ for firing some sort of payload rockets into space from a peninsula in NZ because of our clear skies. Doesn't say much about the lack of pollution in your own nation does it.
5
For the ozone, we stopped using what caused it (CFC), and it healed. For climate change, the world is using what causes it (CO2) than ever before. So it's not going to heal, until we stop the cause. However, it will be much harder because we have started all these positive feedloops, such as the ocean filled to the brim with CO2 and heat, also the tundras melting letting out methane, also the wildfires destroying the trees that take up carbon. Drastic measures must be taken if human want to exist. Do everything possible!
5
One glaring result of climate warming is that Russia will be a primary beneficiary. Their Tundra is thawing creating huge swaths of arable land and the Arctic see is melting giving Russia the warm water ports they have sought for so long.
In retrospect, the amount of disinformation available on climate warming makes me believe that the reluctance for our governments to act has been nurtured by Russian operatives.
Very poor analogy: CFC's did not run the world economy and provide trillion$ in corporate profits. CFC factories weren't located in many powerful Congressional districts. Substitutes did not threaten Neoliberal ideology or capitalism as a system.
In addition, the editorial downplays the role of law and legal and regulatory mandates that drove the CFC remedy. In contrast, Paris Accords are voluntary and each nation sets its own voluntary goal. There is no binding enforcement mechanism.
We can thank Obama for that. He cut the bilateral deal with China and drove the voluntary individual nation approach.
1
It is naïve to think that today's geopolitics, economics and global banking and corporate structures, domestic politics in many countries where propaganda and denial can nullify science, and the per capita use of daily energy today v/s ozone use 50 years ago are the same.
The crusade by young people becoming eligible to vote in the most populated and pollution contributing countries is the only hope … if they can get organize and educated through social media. The Hong Kong democracy movement is the model. Surely, the fututure in a livable planet is far more important to all of us.
1
Unfortunately, the scales of the two problems (CFC elimination, global warming management) are totally different. One caused a minor inconvenience while a very narrow sector of the economy was temporarily affected, and the other requires a massive reduction in the standard of living globally until the world can adjust to lower carbon releases. In one only one tiny industry's ox was gored, in the other, every ox on the planet gets gored. Still we have to try and will probably all die trying.
2
The Editors make a good point here--refreshingly rational to some extent, by focusing on science and technology rather than ideology, politics and carbon tax, for example. One of their most important points is that "change" and "warming" are indeed too abstract and it is otherwise nearly impossible to craft actually structural responses around those metrics. That is why good, old fashioned "pollution" is so much more understandable, visible and especially, measurable. As for large-scale public policy, such as Kyoto, those more resemble peace treaties, arms agreements or other pledges--they really don't mean much both in history, and in management effectiveness. One of the most troubling developments in the climate contention involves "green" investment guidelines by large investment funds that merely seek to "check the box" with whatever gestures may assuage public opinion, while soft regulatory networks like Davos are seeking to corral private equity into conforming to its ideologies in allocation. Readers may appreciate my opinion in this week's FT, "Offsetting does nothing to reduce carbon." Regards. https://www.ft.com/content/b07b000e-174f-11ea-9ee4-11f260415385
2
This message must be made over and over.
But it must be supplemented by explaining why early efforts by Johnson and Moynihan were foiled. Explain exactly how the fossil fuel industry has prevented this. Explain exactly how the fossil fuel industry caused suburban sprawl and the absence of a true rail passenger system.
The fossil fuel industry is not our friend. They are the crack dealer selling us the easy way to get along. We all must drop this habit.
5
Had the environmental left not struck fear into the American people with ‘China Syndrome’ hysteria about nuclear power generation, America could be on par with France’s nuclear powered electrical generation capacity of over 80 percent of the nation’s need. How much greenhouse gas has been put into the atmosphere as a result of this 40 year failure to do so? It reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw plastered on a stop sign on the Colorado Univ. campus in Boulder (home to NOAA) back in the ‘80’s...it read ‘split wood, not atoms’.
2
I believe PHD scientist making climate change claims are academically competent just as I believe the professors offering expert opinions during the impeachment trial hearings were academically competent. I also believe expressed opinions in an area of expertise can be colored heavily by ideology as I believe was illustrated in the impeachment hearings.
Recall the three academic witnesses called by the Democrats favored impeachment. The one appointed by the Republicans voiced the opposite viewpoint. As I recall the Republicans witness stated he did not vote for Trump but that shouldn't matter and didn't matter with regard to his expert opinions. I also recall that the three Democrat witnesses were all Democrat donors.
What I got out of that is the highly educated experts given the same situations offered opinions favoring the side that appointed them. Additionally, the Democrat witnesses also offered opinions favoring the side they had politically donated t.
If top legal experts give decisively different opinions on the issue of impeachment, such that both can not be fully correct, why should I believe climate change scientist over an issue that can not be simply proven either way. Law, like science is based on laws, and observations/facts
Why shouldn’t I assume that for the issue of climate change that is difficult to precisely nail down either way, that expert opinions may be highly colored by ideology?
@John - Simply put because the scientific community's concerns and predictions about climate change are based on empirical data that go back more than a millenium. The impact of rising CO2 was established many decades before there was any ideology associated with the concept of climate change. And, by the way, you do not have to look very carefully to notice that most of those who deny climate change are doing so because of or for economic interests that would be affected by a change away from carbon-based fuels. So the "debate," such as it is, is mostly between those who point to evidence accumulated overt time and those who fear losing money. You figure who is more likely to be trustworth.
4
@John
You mean like 'experts' who state 1+1=2 ?
The Constitution was designed to be interpreted, scientific facts are to be validated and understood.
3
@KCBinBethesd
I believe that not to long ago all but the Russia model over predicted temperature rise. If you look at C02 concentration there are periods where C02 had risen and temperature has dropped.
If I understand correctly we have significantly less climate change than the original. IPCC repor predicted and that helps establish a level of credibility.
Why is climate change treated as a stand-alone problem? Your editors and others seem to think that if we solve climate change, we will live happily ever after. Can we ignore our oceans filled with plastic? Forests disappearing to make furniture and produce soybeans to feed China? Our topsoil turned into repositories for fertilizer and pesticides to feed billions of people? Millions of species going extinct due to overdevelopment?
If CO2 never had the property of heating the atmosphere, we would still be in deep trouble. Our human (perhaps genetic) drive to consume and procreate would simply reach the next most probable cause of our extinction.
7
Plasma physicists might be able to come up with a climate changing solution. It might of course require about $20 trillion, but given the anti-science administration we have in the USA, it’s not likely to happen or even be considered.
It’s the industrialization flywheel effect: Europe (specifically England), and the US, industrialized in the mid-nineteenth century, and now Asia (specifically India and China) are continuing the momentum of the flywheel into the 21st century. It would take 150 years to counter that momentum. If the Earth is still a habitable planet for organisms that use oxygen-based metabolism by that time, I predict human beings will be extinct, due to the corruption of our immune systems, which take geologic-scale time to evolve. The inflammation response, and its inexorable cascade, will extinguish us, along with every other life form- except a erotic bacteria and the viruses that eat them.
1
@Robert M. Koretsky I meant ANAEROBIC bacteria, although those might live somewhat of an erotic lifestyle in symbiosis with viruses!
Classic argument that's used by the "save the planet" crowd. And the analogy/example couldn't be more wrong. The real changes necessary, and even then they may have little impact, are so monumentally broad and deep that they will never happen.
Just to start anything we do requires energy. Period. Making solar panels, wind mills, electric cars, etc, etc requires vast amount of energy.
What we really need to be spending our limited resources on is minimizing the impacts on the future. Like banning all new building from some certain distance from the coast, say 5 miles, based on elevation.
3
the situations are analogous -- there was single causal variable (aerosol sprays) and a single variable effect. Giving up fluorocarbons wasn't a huge burden nor did it threaten our economy. With CC, the alarmists would like us to believe that climate is a univariate equation - fossil fuels increases temps -- climate is much more complex. Moreover, if stopping burning fossil fuels is required - it means a massive remake of our economy.
And hate to tell you folks --- forest fires are the result of bad forest mgmt, overpopulation and letting people move into fire prone areas. Not to mention the electric companies. Further, our hurricane season this year, not much different than those in the 1880s-1920's. And US temps for the first 10 months are lower than the avg for the last 125 years ((US has the most accurate temp records of any country on earth). Trying to compare the ozone problem to climate change is ridiculous. Not even close. The science re Ozone was straightforward and accepted. Climate Change -- not so much. The science is weak. Yet the alarmists want to destroy our economy (no fossil fuels, no nukes, lets just live on wind and solar)).
1
@Ralphie - in short, you either don't understand the science, haven't read it, or like most climate change deniers, choose to disregard what you wish were not true. You also make a common, fundamental mistake--claiming that switching from fossil fuels "means a massive remake of our economy."
That is nonsense. The largest owners of wind farms are the same individuals and companies who owned and/or still own petroleum and natural gas extraction and refinement outfits. Texas and Oklahoma are far ahead of other states in erecting wind and solar farms, and improving the grid infrastructure to handle the input, for a simple reason: once the investment is in place, the profits from renewable energy far exceed those from extracting oil and gas from the earth.
Your tired objections re: the impact of forced innovation on the economy are identical to what automakers claimed when the CAA was promulgated--and now fuel-injected and forced-induction ICE engines are more powerful, efficient, durable, and operate smoother in cold weather and at altitude than any 'pony car' produced in the '60s and '70s, and the profit margins on these cars remain substantial. Enough of this Neo-con propaganda, already.
5
@J Young Do you know how to read? My primary point is that comparing the response to Ozone and CC are not analogous. Univariate models are easy to understand and it didn't require a reworking of the economy. If you think we can just switch from fossil fuels to wind and solar without a glitch of think we can wean ourselves away from fossil fuel are laughable. And by the way, I've not only studied climate study I've analyzedit -- my work has led to the withdrawal of at least one paper already published in a 'refereed' journal. So I speak with confidence. I don't merely repeat slogans like most alarmists, I know the data -- and the science is weak.
Unlike Petrochemicals, the Chloroflourocarbon industry did not have trillions of dollars invested in it then. It did not fund the Sunni-Shia war, the destruction of public education in the U.S., or the Russian Oligarchy. It did not appoint U.S. Presidents, nor did it ravage the oceans with its effluents. The Ozone layer was saved from being consumed not because the beast was thwarted by the forces of good. It was saved because the beast was feasting elsewhere. This time you have to pry open the beast's jaws to save the world, and I have very little hope we will succeed.
6
The Editors write that among possible actions similar to those taken to save the ozone layer are: "carbon-free alternatives to produce electricity; an all-electric vehicle fleet; an end to deforestation; climate-friendly agricultural practices; [and] large-scale dietary changes[.]"
What's conspicuously absent from that list is something the mere prospect of which strikes terror in the hearts of Congresspersons on both sides of the aisle: legislation requiring each of the above things, and shunting a substantial portion of our bloated weapons acquisition budget to research and development of ultra-efficient battery storage and superconductor technology, to make solar energy viable on a mass scale to power our nation's homes and businesses.
Why have we not seen a cascade of bills introduced to solve these problems--or put more bluntly, why do our lawmakers lack the courage of their espoused convictions? Quite simply, it's because they care more about keeping their $174,000 paychecks and health insurance than saving the planet for their own grandkids. This self-preservation paralysis seems insurmountable even to progressive Democrats, many of whom had to be dragged kicking and screaming into impeaching the most lawless and unfit president in history. If they can't put their country before their own interests, we are all doomed.
10
If ones timeline is less than 100 years, no meaningful reduction in CO2 will be met until nuclear is adopted as core baseload generation technology.
1
We must reverse the deforestation of the past. Let forests grow and plant trees on a monumental scale. This is part of the solution.
6
@sginvt: The C02 that's causing the bulk of the problem was released from the lithosphere, not the biosphere. It took geological eons to get it there, and a lifetime or two to release it.
Yes, we need to plant a gizillion trees, but that is a temporary stopgap to provide short-term mitigation. A stable biosphere releases as much C02 as it sinks, except for the small percentage that it drives into the lithosphere (underground) every year. In the long run, we need to get it out of the biosphere and into long-term storage, back where we got it.
2
@mlbex Thank you for expanding on my thought, I agree. Every time these conversations come up I need to advocate to a jumpstart of the biological response. Especially when we are trending towards further and further deforestation. My farming efforts inform me of the futility of fighting the Earth's voracious appetite to "consume" and grow. I understand this is not a solution in itself, but we expend way too much effort (and CO2) in fighting back "weeds".
Despite the trifecta of hair-raising reports, historic hurricanes and life-threatening drought and heat in India and other parts of the world, Americans and their elected officials have yet to wake up.
Here's just one example. In the past two years, Ford and GM have terminated or reduced production of smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles in favor of the increasingly popular SUVs and light pickups. No outcry from the public. No legislation on the part of Congress. Crickets.
Someone explain to me where their hope is coming from. I need some.
13
@thebigmancat
They hope for more money, and kick the can...
Yes, you have to have hope, because without hope nothing can be accomplished. Lots of inventors were called 'mad' for thinking the impossible. I did read somewhere that China has invented some machine that can clean up plastic pollution in oceans. This is USA's shame as USA are supposed to be world leaders in technological advances in the world. USA was about the only country in the world that didn't sign an International Agreement to rid the world of pollution. I did read that some USA States have taken their own lead and are formulating their own agreements as they know they won't get international trade deals unless it can be shown they have signed international agreements to clean up toxic world pollution and toxic emissions.
2
It’s high time we focus on technological innovation and mitigation, rather than the far too late, Quixotic attempts to control emissions. If this was 1990 again, emissions control might be a viable strategy, but according to the continuing apocalyptic projections, the emissions horse left the barn at least 10 years ago, and ,without mitigation, even if emissions were cut to zero today, temperature rise would still be predicted for 2+ degrees centigrade. It’s too late. Carbon scrubbing technologies and sea ride management need to be the prime focus.
3
@The Revionista
Prime focus must be nuclear as baseload generation technology. Now. Unless of course your timeline for and meaningful reduction of CO2 is 100 years.
2
@The Revionista You're right...but only sort of. Carbon scrubbing will need to be a pat of the equation. But reducing emissions will, too. There is no viable carbon scrubbing technology that can function at the scale required to mitigate the problem if we continue to emit 37 billion tons of C02 each year. Just as the obese person who opts to have his stomach stapled must ALSO go on a diet, we need to radically ratchet down emission AND pursue technological measures.
1
I wish I could share the Editorial Board's optimism.
Nearly fifty years ago, we already knew about climate change too - and yet chose to do nothing about it. Now we are confronted with multiple related phenomena interacting with each other in ways almost impossible to control or even predict.
This is the core problem: Our model of development never depended on use of a specific chemical, but it does depend on rising use of energy. That is why we failed to get to grips with climate change, and and that is why we are nowhere near staving off the coming - or current - crisis.
8
@S North First real steps are first real steps. They can be considered while we become perfect.
4
Addressing climate change requires nothing less than a wholesale restructuring of our economic system. The current system is simply a giant, unsustainable Ponzi scheme based on ever increasing consumption. Unfortunately, humankind does not seem up to the task.
25
The only thing fearful about the climate crisis is the fossil fuel companies using their billions of dollars to squelch the easy solutions to the problem. But another aspect is we ourselves. Recently I volunteered with a nationally-known climate group at a public outreach event. It happened to coincide with a huge march for suicide prevention. What irony. I noticed that several in our group spent the entire time talking only to each other. They completely ignored the hundreds of young marchers going by. That says a lot about why the United States is failing on global warming.
6
While it feels good to imagine a path reducing atmospheric greenhouse gas levels, a slowly progressing global catastrophe is already built in. Under ideal conditions, the rising rate of CO2 generation might be curtailed, but reducing CO2 levels is beyond our grasp and will remain so for decades to come. Sadly, social, political and economic conditions are far from ideal so the rate of CO2 production is likely to continue increasing until the devastating effects of sea level rise, acidification and deoxygenation, habitat loss and species extinctions, and unlivable climatic change reduce the human population and our ability to maintain industrial and agricultural expansion.
5
Climate change is very different from he Ozone problem.One required very small adjustments that were hardly felt by anyone while the other demands a radical change in how practically any productive activity is done and a radical change to our unsustainable goal of more economic growth and larger human populations.Solving the latter does not imply, by any stretch, that we can solve the former. Actually our inability to adopt SSE (Steady State Economics) implies that we are past the point of no return.
8
I wish I shared the writers optimism that human kind will solve the global warming crisis. Unfortunately I do not. The latest evidence suggests that we are near or almost near the point of no return on climate change and the planet will be in an irreversible tail-spin of warming temperatures and catastrophe (study the planet Venus for clues). The current president and world leaders do not have the compunction to lead the world to new energy systems and killing the fossil fuel industry; drive new food chains that do not include meat production; bring back the great forests of Europe and America and stop the jungles from burning; and change our modes of transportation from airplanes to ships and rail, and gas burning cars and trucks to electric; and finally institute mechanisms to stop population growth and bend the population curve to a downward slope. These leaders are more interested in being re-elected and burying their heads in the sand than telling truths and educating the populace of the dangerous path the world is on. This effort requires moral courage, an attribute in short supply these days. I believe eventually the world will recover but it will be after the worst period of human existence we have ever seen; worse than the great plagues that wiped out half of the population and WWI and WWII combined. Mother Nature will get her way but we will not like it.
9
@Ski bum Wrong! The leaders will do what we tell them to do. So far, that is not happening, except in Hong Kong.
1
@Feldman The fact is Ski-bum ... the people are not instructing leaders to get busy with climate action. In their deep concern, the people elected to our two top offices Trump and McConnell, men who won their popularity by dissing climate concerns.
By the time people wake up, it will likely be too late.
ps. Climate per se is only a part of the environmental disasters we are spawning.
The oil and gas industry wants to keep drilling and even accelerate exploration for and recovery of oil and gas resources. This has been supported by the Republican party and the Trump administration. The managers and owners of petroleum resources surely understand the risks of global warming. They are facing a business dilemma. They own an asset in the ground that will almost surely lose value as the response to global warming accelerates. Oil companies and investors have paid billions of dollars to acquire and exploit these resources. They are carried on their balance sheets with values in the trillions of dollars. Unlike other assets, they are losing value. The future value of these assets is declining as the pressure to reduce carbon emissions and find substitutes for carbon based fuels increases. For this reason, it is in their interest to drill and sell now, even at current low prices. They fear that the future value of their petroleum and gas assets may decline and be far lower than they are today.
The recent initial public offering of Aramco by the Saudis reflects the recognition that their assets may never be worth more than they are today. Owners try to sell their assets when they have reached their highest value. This is what truly drives the current and continuing expansion of drilling; fear that the future value of carbon fuels will be approaching $0.
12
@Mark Fichman "Stranded Assets!" This is the rub and is the reason solving the ozone problem is unlike solving global warming.
The Climate Crisis needs to be resolved through global agreements that include scaling back the might of military powers, which are some (especially Uncle Sam's) of the worlds worst polluters.
Solving global warming is a global peace project. Rational minds need to prevail; the irrational greedy imperative of the capitalist project needs limits and proscriptions against doing harm to the planet.
Thanks for your lucid characterization of the key problem at bottom of our energy problem.
2
@Chuck Wrong! The ozone threat was/is a global concern. It's solution was/is global. It was/is just smaller, by several orders of magnitude. In every case, these global problems are addressed ONLY when the people demand it. And thy are beginning to do that wrt climate. The rate of progress will be determined 100% by the rate at which humans 9ie the people) decide to act.
1
There is virtually NO problem we can't solve if we spend our resources WISELY, cut the military "budget," stop interfering in other countries, build up our educational system, invest in our own country, and tax progressively. We can have it all if we get rid of the oligarchs, the plutocrats, the "conservatives," the religious extremists, the mega monopolies, the folks who want to deny all rights to the poor women and people of color, the folks who feel superior to their neighbors, the bullies who love abusing the people they're supposed to protect. We could have as happy secure lives as they do in the Nordic countries, if we adjust our thinking, and concern ourselves with the general welfare.
5
@ChesBay
You’re saying we can solve this problem if we “get rid” of half the people in this country? How would you “get rid” of them?
1
One thing not mentioned that has a significant impact on climate change is war. All those jets, all those guns, all those vehicles, and many of the ships use CO2 emitting processes to work. An M1 Abrams gets less than one mile per gallon (0.6 mpg). An F18 carries a fuel load of over 14,000 lbs (about 2100 gallons).
Saving the planet from climate change will have to include significant cuts to everyone’s military. Unfortunately, making sure everyone cuts back properly so that no one is in a superior position, is going to be extremely hard to enforce. Cheating on this could really show some local benefits while leading to global catastrophe.
9
@ASPruyn The military impact is pretty small in comparison to daily transportation, driving, trucking, shipping, consuming, etc.. The Department of Defense has also been on the forefront of addressing many of these impacts. The real problem is overpopulation and consumerism. The militaries of all the world could disappear tomorrow, and you would be in exactly the same place.
3
@ASPruyn - Think about this. Approximately 400,000 cars pass the intersection of the 1-405 and 101 here in Los Angeles every work day. And let's assume those cars average 1 gallon of gasoline per day going to work (and it is probably more). That is 400,000 gallons of gasoline a day. That is the equivalent of 200 F18 flights per day. And that is only one freeway intersection. We haven't counted the famous Orange Crush or the MacArthur Maze (Bay Area).
And on and on it goes. This mass of population and use of cars is going to result in the death of the planet.
2
Yes, it can be done. And, it MUST be done. The roadblocks are almost entirely political and so it is on that front that progress has to be made. The climate denial crowd will likely never be convinced, since their credulous mentality and morally bankrupt leaders appear to be conditioning them to believe this is all God's will. So, what is to be done? Clearly political control has to be wrested from them, and it will have to be done by a coalition of youth, women and progressive political action groups around the world. Many businesses are already on board as well. The main question seems to be can we make this happen fast enough to avoid a total calamity; one that the "rapture" people appear to want and the rest of us are hoping to avoid.
6
There are several things wrong with this article. For one thing it implies that Trump was right that we got a raw deal in the Paris climate agreement. The US has twice the per capita production of carbon dioxide of any other country in the world.
Second you need to come right out and say it—we can’t solve this problem without organized international action. To state the obvious, we don’t control the state of our atmosphere, everybody does. The current administration is not only opposed to such action, it is actively undermining it.
For that reason, the biggest problem for climate change is Trump. It has to be understood that he is so big a problem that he can negate the efforts of everyone else. Anyone who has the slightest apprehension about climate change has to realize that there is one priority overwhelms all else. Support for Trump is denial. End of subject.
8
@jerryg
Planet earth could care less about ‘per capita’ consumption. It is total CO2 output per country and the rate of increase in each country that matters now and in the future...and that puts China and India in front. Without their concerted effort to shift to non-greenhouse gas energy production, it simply won’t matter what the rest of the world does.
7
@J House
Just to clarify, the per capita argument was about the "raw deal". As to getting everyone on board, that is the point of international action. China and India are important, but it's not just them. There is also quite a bit of CO2 production from developing countries in the "none of the above" category. For all of that to work we need active participation of all countries, including us, in a process of continuing shared commitment.
We can't sit back, say we'll do what we feel like, encourage everyone else to buy our coal, and expect the rest of the world to miraculously organize to bail us out.
@jerryg
For anyone interested, there is a good (very short) video on this subject at https://wp.me/p8c7iO-Dl
Yes, we can.
Consider the modest aerial hops we took in Kitty Hawk in 1903 and just 66 years later we land on the moon!
But we need the collective political will and I fear it will take a cataclysm to awaken it, just as the carnage of WWI and WW2 resulted in the first steps toward world governance with the League of Nations and the United Nations.
2
“the campaign of denial and disinformation mounted by Exxon Mobil and other big fossil fuel companies “ Not to mention their wholesale buying of legislators.
If we deal with carbon, Exxon Mobil, Charles Koch, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and a lot of other immensely wealthy political players will lose money. How do you propose we deal with that? Pretending it’s a problem of disinformation and lack of public understanding isn’t helpful.
6
It’s interesting that the US bought into man made ozone depletion but 30 years later won’t respond to AGW. But the prevailing political atmosphere is more strongly distrustful of large domestic and international “nannies” that many perceive as trying to keep them from pursuing the freedom to do as they want.
I don’t know what really happened but the Reagan era of selectively trusting the government seems to have stayed with us. There seems to no concern about massive deficits, national debt and alarming income inequality. Yet a monstrous defense budget and prolonged, pointless military adventures are tolerated, if not championed.
America is a relatively young and inexperienced nation compared to many of those in Europe. We act like adolescents who can’t seem to properly prioritize needs or control impulsive behaviors. I’m hoping that as the Boomers (of which I’m one) die off younger generations who must face the results of our follies will recognize the weaknesses and dangers in time to change direction.
5
The part of this article about controlling CO2 emissions for climate change is based on a lot of aspirational conditions. Those didn't apply to the fluoro- and hydrofluorocarbon that diminished the ozone layer. For the refrigerants, there were specific sources and uses. Governments had the authority to pass laws and rules unpopular with industries responsible. And primarily, governments in the US and other G-7 countries supported regulation. There was no place to get away from UV light and few special interests benefited from its effects.
There are still huge profits to be made from fossil fuels, and more than that, a widely disproportionate spread in those who will suffer and those who will benefit from the status quo. People are going to have to change attitudes before much change in poisoning the atmosphere with CO2 occurs.
It's sad but likely true that in the short term, the best use of resources is in adaptation to the effects of climate change. A lot of people are going to suffer, but globally, choices and the guiding influence now are being made by those who will or expect to benefit from the chaos that looms. Gloomy, but demonstrably the situation to this point.
4
Why are journalists compelled to find a "silver lining" in every story? Is it because depressing and discouraging stories deter readers from coming back for more? You don't seem to be able to find an article about climate change (several quite recently in the NYT) that is at least somewhat reassuring at the end.
But what if you read the actual official reports and articles by scientists? You find the earth heading towards 5-6 F of warming and 40 inches of sea level rise by the end of the century. You find the UN officials most aware of the issues saying that there is no indication that there is the necessary action or planning is happening.
Note that some the scary scenarios published by the IPCC already include the mitigating effects of the "silver bullets" journalists are fond of pointing out as the reasons to be hopeful.
What if there is no reason to be hopeful?
15
@Mike Ferrell
We should be thinking about Resilience and the fact that it will probably require centuries to bring our planet back to a more survivable state. The inertia of climate change is largely beyond our ability to control. We might be able to reduce the rate of climate change by decreasing the CO2 content of our dangerously polluted atmosphere, but we can do little to correct the forces already embedded in the system. We have fouled our nest and the consequences will require an international effort far beyond that experienced from World War II. Resilience ranges from individual households to nations, in advance, not just adaptation after the fact.
1
Irrefutable science? Since when did "irrefutable" Trump systemic obfuscation and willful ignorance? I'm reminded of the comment attributed to Churchill or Abba Eban: "you can always trust Americans [and others] to do the right thing, only after they have exhausted all other alternatives." But for a number of centuries it may be too late. Till then I, and countless others, will do all that we can to bring about an environmentally thriving, socially just and spiritually fulfilling human presence for this common home of ours.
With great irony, it was environmentalist who prevented the world from implementing the solution. Nuclear energy.
For some reason, nuclear was blown up into a catastrophic danger to mankind while ignoring the immediate deadly impacts of coal and oil, not to mention the long term consequences. Thousands upon thousands have died in the production of coal and oil and burning it, not to mention the real environmental and human cost.
Ponds of coal ash destroying water supplies for thousands, mountain tops gone forever, oil gurgling into the sea through broken pipelines andrill rigs. The slow and inevitable health impacts from living near a coal fired power plant. The impact to climate.
None of this would have happened with nuclear power. o But nuclear - Never! It's too dangerous for mankind. It's not safe.
The science and engineering has progressed. Nuclear power needs to be developed now if we have any hope of saving the planet. (In conjunction with all the other non-CO2 power supplies!)
4
@Larry This may have been true 20 years ago but nuclear is no longer competitive. If you had to invest your money into a nuclear plant, you would see. Wind, solar, and storage are already competitive with fossil fuels. All we need is public policy that taxes carbon and boosts wind, solar, and storage. If you think environmentalists killed nuclear, surely you can agree that President Trump, the Republican Party, and dishonest media like Fox News are killing the planet and all hopes for future generations.
2
@Larry Nuclear as practiced, unfortunately, demonstrated the potential of rendering large parts of the world uninhabitable for hundreds or thousands of years based on one, dumb mistake or design failure. You can't ask the world to ignore Chernobyl, or Three Mile Island, or the Japanese plant that was destroyed in the hurricane. I am afraid that nuclear's terrible track record will prevent us from ever realizing its potential that utilizing smaller and safer reactors might permit. However, the advances in renewables make this an academic exercise.
@Larry Don't argue for Nuclear Energy without simultaneously explaining the true cost of liability insurance as well as explaining how to manage the waste.
Mr. Putin wants Mr. Trump to lift sanctions on Russia so it can sell its nuclear power plants throughout the Middle East. You might be shilling for the Russians in your call for Nuclear Power.
1
The bad news is that US with its cult religion of “individualism” and “freedom” is poorly situated to act on pending disasters that require drastic collective actions.
The good news is that US is a crumbling super-power that is withdrawing into itself and losing both its influence and impact on the world as a whole. Remember US is only 10% of the worlds population. As it crumbles from “super” to “average” it will move towards being only 10% of economic activity, energy use, etc.
The future of energy is solar/wind combined with efficient energy storage and transfer systems. All of that can be developed without US government support. After it has been developed to be scalable and commercially superior to carbon-based energy systems US would have to choose between adopting it or lose its commercial viability as a country. In other words, free market forces will eventually drag the US into the future. I agree it would be much better (for US and the world) if US decided to be a leader in this transformation - but it will happen regardless.
The other thing that has to happen is carbon capture. We will not be able to stop production of greenhouse gasses in time, so we need to pull it out of the air. Instead of NATO countries spending 2% of their GDP on military; demand all the world countries spend 2% of their GDP on carbon capture. Those refusing should be subjected to tariffs that collect a similar amount of money (to be used for carbon capture facilities in other countries).
7
@Ivan You are right. America was built as a county with unlimited space and a wilderness to tame. We won't get in to the inconvenient truth that the taming included destroying native civilizations that lived in harmony with the earth and could have gone on existing forever. The America of 1775 is long gone. We can have political freedom, but in an overpopulated world, we all simply cannot do as we wish in every sphere of our existence.
1
@Ivan
How comical your claims!
The US cult of individualism has produced a nation which has reduced its emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses since 2007 despite a 10% increase in US population.
Whereas China with its cult of anti-individualism has been relentlessly increasing its emissions during the same time period. China overtook the US in emissions in 2005 and has been relentlessly increasing them ever since, now more than 225% as much as the US.
3
The US is the second-biggest emitter of CO2 in the world. If we elect adults to the White House & Senate who are not climate denialists corrupted by fossil fuel money (in other words, not GOP), we CAN move quickly on this. Solar on every rooftop, windmills up & down the highways, subsidize farmers to convert their methods to use soil as carbon sinks, large subsidies for electric cars & fast (direct current) chargers everywhere. I live in CA now, but I grew up in a cold climate (MA) - windmills & small-scale hydro make sense there, as well as EFFECTIVE programs to weather-harden homes. (Current program & even the Obama one - a joke. If you make less than $20K, you don't qualify; hey news flash, if you make less than $20K, you probably don't own a home). So we need to do all of the apartment buildings, too.
8
Can mankind successfully address climate change? Absolutely- we have the requisite technologies and scaling them to the necessary size is a do-able if enormous challenge.
The more interesting question is whether mankind will successfully address climate change. And the answer to that is also, unfortunately, absolute- no, we will not.
First, a large portion of the U.S. electorate is in thrall to a man who apparently still believes climate change is a hoax. That man will almost certainly be re-elected president. So one of the largest global polluters will take no meaningful action for at least another four years.
Second, other countries such as India and China have shown no ability or intent to reduce their emissions on a scale requisite to meet the impending disaster.
Third, and most sadly, it is almost certainly too late. Temperature rise is occurring faster and faster, every month brings news of another positive feedback cycle that makes arresting the rise of temperature even more difficult, and the amount of time remaining to change is vanishingly small. I am sorry, but optimism at this point is nothing more than whistling past the graveyard.
3
Fixing the ozone issue was easy because the only entities materially affected were evil corporations producing chemicals. Fixing global warming will have a very large impact on ordinary citizens and, unless China and India make major changes, will have no impact on the environment.
3
@ J. Waddell, please stop repeating this debunked lie. China and India contribute far less emissions, both as a total amount and per capital than the US does. Not to mention the fact that, as with most things that are driven by economics, if the US doesn't take the lead, the efforts are likely to fail.
We can and should be at the forefront of every effort to stop the madness, but lack the political will to do so.
4
Matt Here are the facts - million tonnes of CO2 emitted nationwide in 2018:
China - 9428.7
United States - 5145.2
India 2479.1 (increasing 5.4% per year)
Your premise has been overtaken by reality
1
@Matt I think you need to check your sources. China has double the total carbon emissions of the United States. https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emissions
1
It would be terrific if the premise of this essay was true or realistic, but the issue is revealed in the first two paragraphs: the evidence of the discovery rattled the public, and the federal government took decisive action.
With climate change, overwhelming evidence exists and the public is rattled, but an entire political party not only refuses to acknowledge that evidence, but actively pushes back against it.
So long as the GOP is a wholly owned subsidiary of conspiracy theorists, climate change deniers and petrochemical concerns, we will continue to fiddle while the planet burns.
20
Technology will certainly be part of the fix to heal the damage done to our environment, but it won't be the only cure. We desperately need immediate solutions using the technology we already have. Every environmental issue rolls back to petro-chemicals--fertilizers, plastics, chemicals, and fuel. We need to immediately mandate solar and wind energy: revamp building codes to mandate solar and to subsidize retrofits for solar; convert plastic use to mandate glass instead--it can be recycled; eschew plastic--all forms of packaging. Convert our vehicle fleet to electric; prevent vendors from selling products that use fossil fuels. The more quickly we take these steps, the sooner the planet will heal. It will take hundreds of years to clean up the toxic soup we live in. It's a question of priorities. The last thing we should do is to sit around waiting for some miracle technological innovation.
8
Mr Trump is unlikely to help with this, since he does not accept climate change, only "weather". Frankly, in many countries there are so many vested interests in industries and processes that produce "greenhouse gasses", that little is likely to change much. As in so many other things: we will probably only collectively regret it when past the tipping point.
5
We cannot solve climate change as long as the so-called leader of the free world and one of two major political parties in the most powerful nation on earth are not only climate science deniers but actively suppress the work of scientists in our government agencies.
18
The technology already exists to resolve our climate catastrophe, but we are crippled by a corrupt ruling class that is so blinded by the immediate profits generated by the fossil fuel industry that they are unable to acknowledge the disaster that is unfolding. Research indicates that 100 companies are responsible for 71% of emissions. What will it take to reign in these companies.?
7
@Linda D
Democrats?
Or ay least not Republicans anywhere in government. Since they take no responsibility or even acknowledge the link between fossil fuel and climate change, they have no place where decisions are made.
That leaves the responsity to Democrats. Since they are more responsible and more open to suggestions then they deserve the power to make the changes.
3
The starting point to address the global warming crisis is being honest with the public. Things really are a lot worse than they appear.
Our ecosystems are all connected and as one declines it impacts another and another. Every industry that is required to change will protest, lobby and then sue the government.
Therefore the first step must be to put laws in place now that allow greater governmental power, as long as there is a clear scientific basis for the government action. The EPA must be strengthened.
Secondly, we have to educate the public about the scientific method. Every scientific conclusion is met with some skepticism by other scientists. This is part of the process of inquiring, questioning and revising any scientific theory.
Industry has already seized of this to hire its own science mouth pieces to argue against any new regulations. This will only get worse as we look at more serious regulation.
Then their must be international standards put in place and enforced. If Bolsenaro of Brazil continues to burn the rainforests he should be declared an international criminal and put on trial. international efforts must also seek to save the Congo and Indonesian rainforests.
We really do have very little time left to have an impact. Ecosystems can go from fragile, to endanverged to total collapse in just a few years.
Finally, cattle contribute as much greenhouse gas as all the motor vehicles in the world combined. We must shift our agriculture to a plant diet.
7
@Drspock
That's the easiest and quickest - changing our diets.
Cut out red meat and dairy. Healthier too.
2
It's not just the fossil fuel industry spreading false information. Unfortunately, non-profit "environmental" corporations like NRDC and EDF are also pushing false solutions like "cap and trade," "carbon markets," and industrialized "carbon capture and sequestration." These solutions are rooted in science fiction, not science, and don't go after the root of the problem - runaway GHG emissions. It was Fred Hampton who reminded us, "you can't solve capitalism with capitalism." Until these historically white-led "environmental" groups stop trying to use the markets to save us, and listen to frontline/Indigenous organizations and communities, it's time to start stacking sandbags. Only a Just Transition that keeps fossil fuels in the ground and leads to a cessation of new fossil fuel infrastructure will efficaciously dismantle this crisis.
7
@Anthony Rogers-Wright
The reason we in the US have not initiated building any new coal fired power plants since 2015 (and will never build another one again) - is market forces. Nobody want to build these pollution factories because they are not commercially viable (competitive) any longer. Shunning one (of many) approach that have produced positive results would not seen to be a good idea. We need all hands on the deck in this fight.
3
@Ivan A BIG reason why is because Michael Bloomberg paid the Sierra Club $15 Million to fight coal-fired power plants while he was investing in fracking aka natural gas. Carbon markets DO NOT stop dirty emissions at source. It's Black, Brown and Indigenous communities breathing iniquitous emissions generated by majority-white folk - we have every right to shun anything that continues to assault our public health and continues to treat our communities as sacrifice zones.
Why the reaction to the elimination of CFCs and later to its initial replacement, the HFCs, was so strong and effective and the reaction to increase of carbon in the atmosphere has been so relatively weak needs analysis. In other words, why was the 1987 Montreal Protocol so much stronger than the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, which proved widely unpopular? For one thing, the refrigeration industries (including air conditioning) were less formidable then the fossil fuel industry in size and extent and Exxon and their group were able to flex powerful muscles fed by billions (possibly trillions) to interfere with scientific truth. But mainly , I think the role of presidential leadership, with Congressional backing, was what made the difference. President Johnson, who cared about people as seen in his carrying out the Civil Rights reforms initiated by his unfortunate predecessor, supported the science. Today, we have a leader who claims all this talk about climate change is a hoax, removes us from the Paris Accord, and laughs at science as loudly as the world laughs at him. Much more would be done with concerned and intelligent leadership.
6
If every air conditioning in the earth have been installed with CO2 trapper (filters), we could reduce CO2 drastically.
It have been succeed to get rid of the aerosol, and it might be succeed to reduce CO2.
2
@John
Heat pumps ("A/C") do not directly emit CO2. The fossil-burning plants that supply their electricity do, and those are the issue.
4
The clear difference between solving ozone depletion in the atmosphere, and reducing greenhouse gases, is the scale of the problem. Almost everything in the economic engine creates greenhouse gases, including transportation, food production, housing. This problem requires an entire planet of people to restructure how they live, work, eat. Couple that with not-so-obvious effects of a slowly evolving disaster, and the public can only take so much stock in it. Now, if Miami truly starts drowning in water, and has to be abandoned, then America will finally notice. But at that point, the consequences will be far more dire.
America needs a simpler analogy to understand it.
Q. Would you love you stove on, even a little, when you go out? NO! It is dangerous. In effect, we are acting as if we are leaving a global stove on continuously.
10
When I was just out of college, in the late 70's, I worked for an architecture/engineering firm devoted to solar energy. Then Reagan came into power and wiped out all research into this sustainable power. Since then we have lost 35 years of research and commitment for alternative energies.
I bought my 300-year-old house in 1990 that had solar panels embedded in a slate roof which powered all of my hot water and when these panels ultimately failed, I called my energy company who simply laughed, as they would never find someone to fix them.
We have lost so many opportunities, all of them avoidable.
18
The difference is the economic cost (and societal inconvenience) of switching to a different aerosol propellant were negligible compared to shifting the global economy away from fossil fuels.
Perhaps if we’d started 20 years ago (instead of laughing ) when Al Gore (and others) were trying to get the issue front and center, we’d be better off and technological solutions might have helped the transition.
In fact we have the technological options we need, green power is now as cheap (or cheaper) than fossil alternatives. We just lack the political will to force the expeditious change we desperately need over the entrenched fossil fuel base.
12
@Robert Grant And we are still subsidizing the fossil fuel industry.
2
To allow government to be run by corporations or shills for those corporations, is highest level corruption; here, in China, in Europe, in India, and anywhere else it takes place. We are seeing a blending of governments and corporation capitalism which makes citizens left with no voice other than the streets. The only way we will mitigate the human created disaster of climate change is for everyone to understand it thoroughly. Since we are not teaching our young about it because our old are not doing anything internationally about it, I have little hope. Educate the young through the old taking action. PERIOD. Take action NOW!
4
The question is not if we can; the question is if we will. And on the latter, I see little reason for hope.
6
Of all the corrective technologies to deal with Global Warming cited, a notable one lacking is nuclear energy. That is surprising and unfortunately representative of the lack of urgency that is otherwise suggested. After all, even the Green New Deal cites nuclear energy as a means of achieving clean and renewable energy by 2035 ("All electricity consumed in America must be generated by renewable sources, including solar, wind, hydro,...as well as clean sources such as nuclear...")
For instance, if we were to make the Paris Agreement goal, the U.S. would have to cut carbon by 2.6 percent every year for the next seven years. And it has simply never cut its emissions that fast in such a sustained way before.
In fact, since the end of World War II, only one country has pulled off such a feat: France. Starting in 1974, France undertook an extensive build-out of its nuclear-power industry, and slashed its carbon emissions by an average rate of 2.9 percent every year from 1979 to 1988, while still growing its economy. No country has done anything like that before or since.
Decreasing Global Warming will be a step-wise process starting with means that are proven and impactful. Clearly nuclear energy for electrical power is one of the best means applicable right now.
6
@GerardM What if the US had not stopped building nuclear power plants after 3-Mile Island in 1979, but rather continued as France did? Today our CO2 debt could have been half what it is.
Check out these nation-wide facts on CO2 emissions in 2018:
France 311.8 million tonnes of CO2
Germany 725.7 million tonnes of CO2
1
@GerardM Excellent comments on the value of nuclear energy, and so rare to hear either in this paper's articles or the comments by its readers. Nuclear is the ONLY means at our disposal to produce commercial levels of energy. Even at lower cost, solar and wind are merely tinkering at the edges of the world's power needs, and at the same time ruining our landscapes (and seascapes) with giant windmills, or filling fields and roofs with black panels that may produce hot water where and when the sun shines, but produce less than 1% of real power needs.
2
@GerardM
Sorry but nuclear is an outdated technology that is neither commercially, environmentally or politically viable. The idea that it somehow could be scaled up faster than a similar public investment in solar/wind has no basis in reality.
1
The scope of the modern problem of fossil fuels is tremendous and intensely multi-faceted, needing the attention of the powerful industrialists to the humblest among us. Possible but not probable without governments’ interference. There will have to be tax breaks that allow technologies like carbon sequestration to grow, people to move closer to work or regular activities or their work to move closer to them, and a whole range of daily activities changed.
At the same time our mad president wants to deregulate all energy and commodity saving technologies, from economic to plumbing. Neither he nor the Republican Party can bear to give up any part of their wonderful way of life. This way of life includes everything from gas guzzling power cars to war to steaks every night, and don’t forget racism and misogyny. All very fifties.
Most dramatic and satisfying way out is to impeach Trump, but that really doesn’t go far enough. Both Republican (mainly) and Democrat representatives at all levels of government that will not work on this issue must be voted out of office and braver, much more thoughtful, forward looking leaders voted in.
5
The difference in complexity and magnitude of global warming versus the ozone problem renders this comparison a poor distraction from the disaster we are facing.
4
Can you imagine, if Trump had an epiphany, and decided to address this problem full-on? The Trumpublican lemmings would follow him anywhere, and we progressives would have to put aside our animosity and support the effort. He could seize the mantle and truly be a great leader, simply because he could convince his followers - the ones who at present are the greatest impediment to action - that we have to do this. Alas, it will never come to pass, as his stunted understanding of leadership is fear, division, and bullying. Greatness is completely foreign to him, the king of pettiness. As we're running out of time, we had better get someone in the white house who can truly lead.
8
Finally I'm reading about a comparison I made several years ago.
I was communicating with a couple of conservative friends about the problem of global warming. One of the common complaints went like this: "First they said the ozone hole would get us, then they said we were heading for an ice age - now it's global warming!"
I pointed out that the ozone problem was an excellent example of governments coming together to avert tragedy. I reminded them of the controversy when we were no longer allowed to purchase the familiar R-12 refrigerant for auto AC units, and how many folks were frustrated that they would have to spend a lot of money on their AC units instead of just giving it a charge like before. And then there were the spray cans - big changes there as well!
Most importantly I pointed out that, due to these unpopular (but relatively minor) changes, the problem was solved: the hole in the ozone layer has been steadily shrinking since then. What we can conclude is that the cooperation of governments around the world, guided by the best scientists, averted a global disaster. And we need to do that again.
But the problem today is not in D.C. - it's with the public. As long as a large portion of the population continues to be in denial, they will continue to vote for "leaders" who are also in denial. And when those leaders repeat the heresy, the cycle continues.
6
Who knew addressing climate change was so straightforward? Sounds like our planetary managers have got it well in hand. I haven't felt this optimistic in 30 years!
I like the intention here, but the view that we can handle climate change with technology now is flawed. The acceleration of climate changes impact is a weekly surprise in a new way for our experts. The reactions by the earth will be startling and wide ranging. Our very numbers, compulsion to consume, and the lack of economic and political will have created this crisis and has already spiraled out of control. The only real choice we have is the same choice faced by the Titanics Musicians. Most straightened their ties, took up their instruments and played beautiful music for those who would survive and for those who would perish. I would hope that we too gracefully accept our fate as mankind slips into the depths of history.
7
The writers suggest we can find hope in solving our climate predicament because in an earlier time we solved a problem which was of a scale and complexity much much smaller.
15
The climate crisis is primarily a political problem. Politics is the art of living together in society. In this case, that would mean that people in most societies--China, India, Russia, the United States--would have to agree on what is to be done. They can't on much simpler problems. The problem of climate change cannot be solved unless there is to be a world government.
2
In trying to formed a World Government we will kill each other and hence the environment will be saved.
Energy delivery is a technical process. Changing the global energy delivery service is a technical problem.
If you want to contribute to that change, especially young people, then help with technical solutions. Study chemistry, to improve our science of battery materials. Study electrical engineering to help optimize generation and distribution systems. Learn how to develop smarter (and more secure) computerized control systems for power grids. Design not only more efficient consumer goods but also more efficient manufacturing processes.
Social and political motivation are important, but they are not solutions.
4
@Bob Krantz - Scientists (I'm one) have been talking and offering technical fixes until we're blue in the face. Change requires policy. Carbon-free energy sources are here, and the technology to employ them is well understood. They are not advancing rapidly, because our policies (politics) continue to favor burning fossil fuels. We subsidize fossil fuel exploration and extraction, in large measure because energy companies fund political campaigns. Technical solutions are here; it is precisely because of social and political forces that they are not implemented.
33
@Greg
Contrary to your assertion, we do not subsidize oil at all. Indeed, we penalize its use with special extra taxes.
The vast majority of subsidies to oil were eliminated almost 50 years ago. There remains only between $2 billion to $5 billion annually. But the offsetting special federal taxes on gasoline and diesel are more than $40 billion. Special state taxes on gasoline and diesel add much more since those state special taxes are generally much higher than the federal special extra taxes.
3
@Greg. You are looking for a political solution. A technical solution would generate energy at a much cheaper price and greater convenience than fossil fuels. If I can buy a system for $99 that will power my house for free for 30 years, rain or shine or wind or no wind, it fits in a small corner in the basement, and it does not require construction work, I will stop using fossil fuels in a heartbeat. You may say that I am a dreamer, but that is what we need the next generation to do: to dream and be passionate about those dreams. What scientist have offered as solutions is just not good enough. Eventually we will run out of fossil fuels, and as they say, necessity is the mother of invention. An interest factoid: one of Isaac Asimov future predictions at the World Fair back in the 1960s was a fusion reactor in every home within 50 years. He missed that prediction.
2
The global economic shifts in getting rid of fossil fuels are many orders of magnitude greater than replacing chlorofluorocarbons. The task is so much greater as to render the comparison moot.
As it stands now, we would die if we stopped using fossil fuels. Not using hairspray won't kill anyone. Fossil fuel use is so intertwined in human existence that populations would collapse without it.
That being said, every day that humanity puts off replacing fossil fuels accelerates the destruction of the ecosystem. We will die today if we stop using them and we are beginning to die now for using them. We will die in greater and greater numbers as their use continues.
Big money rules the world and fossil fuel makes a lot of money. We currently have the technology to make the changeover with wind and solar. The missing links are utility class storage batteries and they should be about 10 years away. This research is greatly underfunded.
The resistance is being caused by profit centers moving away from fossil fuels to other sources. Utilities complain that green energy costs more, but they are regulated monopolies and can charge what is needed to recover costs.
What is really needed is a new economic model for utilities that can transform them into energy storage and redistribution companies, instead of power generation companies. This will more easily allow the implementation of dispersed green energy sources.
8
I wish I could share the hopeful view that the editors have. But I cannot.
The problem is that China is not merely an "other big emitter" as the editors mention and then essentially disregard. China is the BIGGEST emitter, emissions so big that they will cause global warming and climate change all by themselves even if the US and Europe were to be eliminated from the face of the earth and thus emit absolutely nothing!
And China's plan under the Paris Climate Accord is to CONTINUE INCREASING its CO2 emissions by another 25% over the next 11 years!
There simply is no hope unless and until China, and to a lesser extent India, stop increasing their emissions and begin decreasing them. And there is no current justification for hope that China will do so since China is determined to continue increasing its emissions. China's celebration of solar projects and similar is nothing more PR effort to divert criticism for its plan to continue increasing its emissions.
China is also a very environmentally inefficient nation. It emits far more to produce the same amount of goods and services than does the US. The US produces 50% more total goods and services than does China, yet China emits about 225% MORE CO2 than the US. If you are fond of making excuses by focusing on per capita emissions, consider per capita Chinese CO2 emissions are about 55% of US per capita emissions. However, per capita Chinese output from those emissions is only about 16% of US per capita output.
10
@Errol
Not very clear what your point is. Engaging China in a world wide forum to address global warming would be a great starting point. For example, the Paris agreement, which was signed by EVERY country in the world, except the US and a couple of odd nations.
The US, with 5% of the world population, consumes about 20% of the world's energy. If the rest of the world, especially China and India, expect to improve their standard of living to US levels by producing energy from fossil fuels, you can imagine the results.
So how about rejoining Paris, leading by example, and promoting clean energy technologies developed in the US?
A win-win scenario that our narcissist ignorant in the White House and his merry band of Republican sycophants will never understand.
1
@Errol is China making high emission manufactured goods for us while we make low emission software apps?
Manufactured goods sent to the US should be counted in our carbon footprint, not theirs, obviously.
1
@Djt
Even if you ignore services and make calculations solely for manufactured goods, China numbers still show China production causes emissions much greater compared to US emissions to produce the same value of manufactured goods.
Capitalism is unsustainable and incompatible with the future of the planet. As long as the power to organize labor and production for the entire world lies in the hands of a handful of plutocrats whose wealth shields them from consequence and whose interests are determined by profit, not the actual needs of society, we will not have environmental justice and our children will inherit a dying planet full of violence, instability and cancer. "Science" will not solve climate change without public funding and public interests wrested from the control of the ruling class who are destroying the earth.
13
@m.e. Climate change will and is being solved by capitalists in capitalist countries. It is the governments that are holding things back with subsidies on fossil fuels.
1
@m.e.
The truly hilarious aspect of your effort to turn every problem into an argument against capitalism is that the world's largest emitter by far of greenhouse gasses is China, a communist dictatorship. The same China is determined to follow its plan to continue increasing its emissions by another 25% over the next 11 years.
1
the difference between the O3 situation and climate is enormous -- 03 was affected by a relatively small slice of industrial chemicals; climate is driven by the unavoidable output of billions of actions in a hyper-distributed system. A few big players could agree re 03; the scale of required coherence to address climate is orders of magnitude more difficult to achieve
7
For a great many reasons that should be obvious, this is not an apt comparison and, thus, will not have a similar outcome.
7
How does our Navy manage to operate and maintain dozens on nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers for dozens of years but we can build any more nuclear power plants?
The only option is to replace fossil fuels. It is not about the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is the gasoline in the tank and the natural gas or coal in the power plant.
Nuclear power alone can generate the power to meet today’s energy usage.
5
@Paul Loeffleri The number of naval reactors which have safely operated and been refueled in the last 60 years number in the hundreds. The depleted reactor cores (the "toxic" waste) are routinely offloaded at a handful of seaports, placed in secure and tested containment structures and transported by rail to storage sites in the western US. As noted: 60 years - no problems, no incidents - just an intelligent solution to another solvable technical problem. This is my response to the argument that we can't safely ship the reactor waste. Long term storage or reuse in 4th gen reactors is also solvable - only held up by an irrational fear of anything nuclear.
The Editorial Board is deluding itself. Technology cannot get us out of our mess.
People around the world want to live in some version of the American Middle Class lifestyle.
The Carrying Capacity of this planet for humans to live their preferred life style, using every technology we have, denser living arrangements, and the like...is a lot less that the billions that live on the earth.
In fact it is most likely something on the order of One Billion or less.
The real problem is that we have to reduce our population to a level that the lifestyle we want and that population number is sustainable within the limits sets by the physical systems of the planet.
You and everyone else is still using magical thinking that technology coupled with a little bit of change in land use can solve the problem. It cannot not.
23
Nice editorial. Nice hope. Here's the problem: Changing refrigerants while inconvenient did not make demands on the infrastructure of our way of life like CO2 has done.
And despite a greater sense of awareness our leadership of deniers still have their heads stuck in the tar sands.
But you're right about a boldness. And fortunately we may have the tools and technologies that just might avert doom. Increasing solar, geothermal, nuclear, and tidal technology to extract energy to meet our increasing demands is a way to go.
But there's been no mention of nature's own system that converts CO2 to storable, edible carbohydrates with its chlorophyll.
Why not use our vaunted bio-engineering technology to develop fast growing grasses and other plants (and plankton) with broader surface areas that can flourish in extreme conditions like deserts to do the work we need done relentlessly 24/7 until we right this fragile ship we call earth?
4
90% of the energy trapped by fossil-fuel induced planetary warming is trapped in the ocean.
Atmospheric concentrations of CO2, CH4 & N20 continue their increase.
A global average temperature increase of less than 2 deg C is thermodynamically impossible to avoid, with 3.5 to 5 deg C by century's end likely.
Our actions indicate we are determined to exterminate what's left of the biosphere.
Scientists have been diligent in their warnings for decades, though the research findings have fallen on deaf ears.
Our tumultuous present, calamitous future and possible extinction are the direct result of humanity's action.
It is all over but the screaming.
31
It’s best for the planet if humans became extinct. Humans are pathogens analogous to to syphilis. It does its damage slowly but inexorably.
1
@Yuri Pelham - humans have existed for hundreds of thousands of years. The damage to the climate has mostly been done in the last fifty years by certain industrial processes.
Thanks for a good Editorial. We need more examples so the typical person can better understand that it is possible to make change happen. In the case of CFCs, I was directly involved in removing them in our manufacturing processes in a GE product line. I also was responsible for engineering out antimony from high volume producers. Neither was ‘easy’. But some common threads are worth noting. In the CFC case the international community was united since the effort had to be global. And there was a solution known to exist. More expensive, but countries and industries were strategic enough to realize it must be done. In the second case, that was also hard and cost money, but again, management, when faced with the issue, was proactive. I sense that is often not the case today. Plus, under a Trump, his administration is quilts of not being strategic nor wanting to be at the global table as a partner. Industry was also proactive in removing phosphates from detergents in the 70s to curb water issues. But, guess what? another industry today is re adding phosphates for a different reason, and that industry and their political supporters are tone deaf. Factory farms are adding mass amounts of nutrients back into the Great Lakes in plain sight. So called voluntary measures are ineffective. Sometimes some industries are so self serving they need to be directed since their management is not capable of the right actions.
11
A feel good piece. Don’t worry, we are in good hands. Our technology will resolve the problem, and we will we unite our nation and the world to action.
We will convince developing nations like China and India to rein in their economies to meet climate goals. At the same time, we persuade our own people to make drastic changes to our lifestyle for a threat that many do not accept and some see as centuries away. And Europe will overcome its failure to meet its own set goals.
Pessimism is not popular. Hope is the star we follow. Hope in science or a deity or whatever will turn things around. Earth’s history of past mass extinctions won’t be repeated with us. Hope.
In the Greek tale of Pandora and the box, the first woman was warned not to open a special jar. Unable to resist temptation, Pandora unsealed the jar to release all the evils upon man. One version mentions that the last evil freed was Hope.
In 1965, James Lovelock warned about the climate. His 2008 book, The Revenge of Gaia, moved that it was already too late. Few of us reading this article will be around for what the outcome will be.
We can only Hope it is a good one.
23
Technological innovations may well help, but the ultimate solution to climate change and restoring the health of the planet is a significant reduction in human population. We can either organize our behaviors and reduce our numbers on our own initiative, or Mother Nature will do it for us. The latter will involve much more pain and suffering.
10
Climate change will thin the population. No problem. We will die off by the billions.
2
Infuriating. Another well-intentioned piece on climate change that almost entirely misses the point. De-forestation happens for a reason. The base explanation for human caused climate change is too many people, not enough trees. The simple, if difficult solution, is fewer babies, more trees. Until we address our voracious appetite for the expansion of one at the expense of the other, the notion that we can invent our way out of this is meaningless.
47
Except your point is wrong. It’s not overpopulation, it’s overconsumption. Relatively small numbers of people account for disproportionate amounts of co2. America is responsible for the majority of emissions to date. I find it infuriating when Americans, whose birth rate is low but whose lifestyles are a primary driver of climate change, try to redirect the conversation to this false talking point. It’s shifting the attention and blame to poorer countries with high birth rates. They didn’t create this crisis, nor would reducing their birth rates solve it. The first order of attention is first world industry and energy consumption.
5
@Steven I agree whit this content. It is a fantasy To beleive humanity will survive it's stupidiness. Money, money, money, the only credo of wall street, pinnochio and alike. By the time politicians get trialed for crimes against humanity, apocalypse will be over the door step.
1
Until the U.S. reverses the supreme court decision known as Citizen's United which allowed unlimited political contributions by corporations, the U.S. will not join the rest of the world in mitigating Climate Change. The long arm of the corporate lobbyist runs America. Lobbyists control the EPA, defense, and healthcare to name a few. Big Pharma prevents Medicare from negotiating drug prices. Americans pay more for healthcare and have a higher mortality rate than every other advanced nation. The fossil fuel lobby decides which wars America fights based on oil. Just weeks ago Trump announced, as he reengaged soldiers into the Middle East, "the oil is safe".
Second, and equally important, until the U.S. selects leadership based on merit and experience (like China), America will continue to be run by incompetent charlatans such as their current president.
Unfortunately, the same country that organized to send a man to the moon is organized to cause the demise of our human habitat. As a scientist, I believe we have time to engage technology to save ourselves, but if Trump is reelected in 2020, that opportunity ends.
In 11 months a minority of uninformed Americans will decide the fate of Planet Earth and thousands of species.
200
@Scientist "Until the U.S. reverses the supreme court decision known as Citizen's United which allowed unlimited political contributions by corporations..."
Citizens United v FEC was brought about because the government was unconstitutionally given the power to shut down political documentaries when released within certain proximity to primaries/elections ("Hillary: The Movie", in this instance). Had McCain-Feingold been written without such overreaching governmental power, there wouldn't have been a case to begin with. I'd like to see campaign finance reform, but not when it allows for the governmental banning of political media types. That's downright Orwellian.
3
@Scientist getting rid if the electoral college is necessary too.
9
@Scientist It is vital that while moving forward we 're honest with ourselves about what is doable. A $3 a gallon tax on gasoline? Not doable, not passable. Even if a Democrat is elected President it would be impossible to get this through Congress. The majority of U.S. voters will never go for this. Period. Gas in France is about $6 a gallon. Imagine the reaction to $6 a gallon gas. All this in an attempt to lower the temperature of the planet by 2 degrees over the next 100 years to see if it will alter the weather. This, even as every bit of evidence has concluded that China’s international coal plant construction alone makes that absurd goal a total impossibility. Fund some real public transportation? Won't work. People will still use their cars. The majority of U.S. voters will not pay more for energy. Period. Every poll backs this up. The overall reality in that climate change legislation is hard to pass even in good times. It's a real killer in an economic downturn. Are we willing to vote against our own self-interests & approve higher taxes on fossil fuels? Are we willing to make the necessary sacrifices? Absolutely not. It's never going to happen. We all know that. When a government tries to enact a green tax to support carbon reduction when income inequality is increasing, people will react to their immediate situations without considering the future. That's the inconvenient truth. Technology can help. But for the short term, we will have to adapt.
2
Unfortunately, the NYT sets up a deeply flawed analogy with CFCs. These ozone-depleting emissions were not the direct by-products of energy use, which in turn is the basis of all economic activity and the growth that economists tell us is essential to a functioning capitalist system. Fossil energy still runs the world, and substitution has been limited more by physics than by politics: Fossil fuels are multi-million year storages of solar energy by living organisms of the distant past, whereas “renewable” solar and wind power can capture only daily flows of solar energy. We also use considerable fossil energy to build, deploy, and maintain these technologies. I certainly agree with the urgency of the climate change challenge. However, telling readers that there is a technological solution to CO2 emissions as simple as a new chemical to replace ozone-depleting refrigerants in appliances is a significant disservice.
104
@David Packer I think you miss the point. There was a will and action taken to address the problem despite industry push back. We have plans on the table that would increase job growth its called the Green New Deal. This would counteract against the fossil fuel industry which, lets face it benefits the large companies that hoard it. The point is we have a herculean task ahead, but we mostly lack political will with the Trump administration to move forward.
8
@David Packer ,
The 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to three scientists for the development of the Lithium-Ion battery. The advances in this field has opened up the great potential for energy storage of "daily flows."
The applications of lithium-ion batteries are vast and still growing, from micro-electronics and pace makers, to electric cars. As with the birth of the transistor (thank you Bell Labs) lithium-ion battery technology combined with the silicon chip, solar energy, wind, and tidal energy has vast potential for everyone on the planet.
Not all of the emerging economies can eliminate their dependency of fossil fuels and the internal combustion engine (ICE). However they stand to benefit from moving it to the scrap heap. Every ICE has to have numerous parts that require fit, function, quality, maintenance and precision that goes into it in order for it to keep it running. Electric motors, not so much.
We can choose to apply and harness that potential, or to stick with what worked in centuries past.
2
On a 4-hour plane ride yesterday, the nice lady next to me and I were talking about the hurricanes that sometimes hit our part of the world. Then she paused, and asked me if I thought climate change was real. "Some of my friends say it is Mother Nature, and everything will be fine again."
What makes this problem so hard to fix? Start there.
34
@Dave Bloch
Climate change is real and it's been real since the beginning of time. So the lady next to you was correct, it is Mother Nature doing what she has always done, and that is change. Please tell us what the optimal temperature of the Earth should be, and please tell us how you will know when we get there. Finally, please tell us what is the probability that spending trillions of dollars will stop climate change, and if does nothing to affect Mother Nature's ever-evolving/changing climate what will you do next.
4
I commend you for writing the first sensible comment that has appeared in this thread, and I commiserate with you over the near certainty that it will be ignored by practically everyone.
2
@philly Just for the record, the earth and its climate are reacting naturally to the re-introduction of copious amounts of carbon into the atmosphere by human activity. Science has conclusively demonstrated that the changes we are seeing now, and will continue to experience, are not "Mother Nature" evolving the climate in some mysterious or natural way. Rather they are the result of human activity. Only though our actions can we hope to cope with it.
8
Every April 22nd we celebrate Earth Day to demonstrate support for environmental protection. The fact of the matter is, planet Earth has existed for billions of years and will continue to exist for billions more long after mankind's reign is over.
Our time on planet Earth is finite, and on our present course we are accelerating the eventual extinction of mankind.
That's correct folks, The Extinction of the Human Race.
15
@mlb4ever,
The Human species. Not a race- a species.
" The global warming problem requires a whole suite of fixes, some of them mammoth, as Mr. Moynihan intuited a half-century ago — carbon-free alternatives to produce electricity; an all-electric vehicle fleet; an end to deforestation; climate-friendly agricultural practices; large-scale dietary changes; and, quite possibly, advanced technologies to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Reimagining the world economy means turning around a very big ship. Not to mention global buy-in."
I hope we can find the nerve and the energy to adopt such a big suite of fixes. For the problem is urgent.
Have you considered going to Mr. Trump and saying, "We will call of our dogs if you work with us on global warming"? The man who wrote the Art of the Deal might agree if you OFFER him a deal.
1
And we also solved the measles problem, so why not cancer.
Ozone was a single problem with is single, identifiable source and solution.
Everything we do, everything we use, everything we consume, everything we require and everything else going on on this planet is the cause of climate change.
Don't hold your breath.
50
@Good John Fagin
Actually, the same distrust of science that has allowed measles to return in the US is part of the problem with climate action as well.
2
The ozone layer problem was a very specific issue to solve. Climate change is far more reaching and complicated. I truly don’t think people realize that it will require a complete change in our socio-economic system to survive climate change. Change and fear of the unknown scares people. So the world will continue to pollute the planet on a grand scale until it is too late. I wish I were more positive about the situation but I know human nature. Barring some amazing technological invention to save the planet from climate change, the planet will wilt and die. And the human race along with it.
21
Thank you very much for the hopefulness of this report. I'm going to paraphrase AOC: we spend billions every year in fixing up climate-related disasters; why not start spending money in research and development for mitigation, prevention, solutions (job-creating solutions)?
29
@Susannah
Has AOC advocated for a reduced US population (including drastically reducing immigration), something that will be needed to have any longterm effect on climate change and our other environmental problems? I didn't think so. When your political agenda gets in the way of the facts and reality your plan is doomed from the outset. The left is no more welcoming of "inconvenient facts" than the right.
1
My parents, children during the Great Depression, raised me to never waste food. Like them, I hang dry my laundry, compost and grow a food garden. Mom brought me to the public library often and as an adult, I use my local one every week. My parents never drank bottled water, neither do I. They also raised me to think critically about needing new things. When I need something, I look to see if I can borrow it or buy it at a thrift store.
I'm thankful for how my parents raised me. They died 20 years ago when the public was still largely unconcerned about climate change but much of how they raised me is useful to address what we are now facing.
But I've needed to go beyond what they taught me. Today, I eat much less meat, have insulated my home and put in LEDs and rooftop solar. I chose a job in part because I can walk to it. I haven't flown anywhere in five years.
I also give monthly to 350.org and the Sunrise Movement and Save the Children to educate girls in the developing world for when girls are educated they choose to have smaller families.
I support only candidates who support the Green New Deal.
I want to give up my car soon and get an electric bike. I wish I could afford to put in geothermal. I know I can do more.
"Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors." - Jonas Salk
149
@Innisfree
Thank you! There are many of us that appreciate people like you and who also live like you. It feels good, and would feel even better if more joined us.
5
To compare the depletion of the ozone layer to the problem of climate change is to compare fixing a flat tire to fixing a transmission, failing pistons and the electrical system in your truck. One problem has a single solution--aerosol spray cans--the other has multiple causes which run the depth and breadth of our economy.
Changing from gas to electric vehicles, from fossil fuel to wind/solar to power our entire industrial and residential grid are daunting and complex problems which will require buy in from a vast number of sectors and individuals.
We ought to do it, but blowing past individuals who see only their own interests to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number has never been easy in the United States.
5
This editorial displays a misplaced faith that science will solve our climate crisis. According to the most recent UN report, the world's nations need to reduce emissions drastically over the next decade. Unfortunately, emission levels are still rising. I am optimistic that scientists and engineers will eventually supply solutions to many of our energy needs and environmental problems. But the urgent task before us is political and economic, not scientific.
84
With ozone, the problem and solution were far more specific. With global warming, the problem is vast. Worse, finding a solution to global warming means making changes to the tenets of greed and convenience, both of which drive world economies, and are the backbones of modern life, urban life in particular. Asking people or governments to make sacrifices that will alter their entrenched habits (frequent jet travel, overnight delivery, leaf blowers, etc.) is a dead-end. Add to that the global trend toward authoritarian rule, and you have more decades of inaction. As tragic as it is, global warming will continue unabated.
5
@Umberto "Add to that the global trend toward authoritarian rule"
It is not clear that authoritarian rule is harmful to the planet. North Korea for instance emits very little CO2 per person and China is the world's biggest producer of solar panels.
When you think of authoritarian rule, do no think of Stalin, or ahem, Trump. Think of Queen Elizabeth I.
Ending climate change will open happen when we end capitalism. That is obvious. There is too much money in it. That's not happening soon, so our only hope is some geo-engineering to buy us some time. It shouldn't be, renewables are as cheap, or cheaper, then carbon, but it doesn't matter. Even if Lockheed Martin has solved fusion, it won't help, they won't change things close to fast enough. We need the revolution - now.
5
@Jeff M
Yes, we also need to end socialism, fascism and dictatorships as well since 50% or more of the Earth's population lives under those conditions in order to stop climate change. We need a revolution now to instill ......., oh never mind lets just have a revolution.
The third rail in climate change action is suggesting life style change. Implicit in such thinking and in the editorial is the belief/false hope that all that is required is more technology. If we just installed more solar panels or enough Tesla power walls, there would be no problem. Or maybe more nuclear power. However we cannot grow our way out of this deadly threat! Consume less, use less, take advantage of clean alternative energy sources; share what we have. This change in thinking and life style will be painful and difficult. But we have no other choice.
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@Robert Whitehair: You make valid points, but I'd argue that many of the necessary changes don't even have to be especially painful. I've cut my driving by 80 or 90% and it's been a pleasure. My mobility is a mixture of biking, walking and public transit, using the car as a last resort. It's benefitted my health too. It's really just a change of habit, not jumping in the car automatically to go everywhere.
My solar system generates my entire net consumption and will pay for itself in a decade or so. No pain there.
The hardest part is cutting air travel, but even there I see options that don't have to turn life upside down. If CA would get its act together and build high speed rail, it wouldn't kill me to support it with a tax, and I'd never again have to deal with fogbound SFO.
1
Addressing climate change requires political leadership. The Republicans “officially” deny that climate change is man made or they claim that it is a hoax. Democratic wannabes, while acknowledging the problem, spend most of their time debating health care because most of their wealthy supporters and the majority of the American voting public will not be here in 50 years when climate change completely transforms the geopolitical landscape. Climate change it would seem is too distant a crisis to deserve our leaders’ immediate attention.
American democracy has always been reactive, not proactive. Reactive was good enough for ozone holes.
10
Wrong. The world cannot solve climate change. First, one of its largest engines, the USA, officially denies that it's even operative. Second, one sees 80 million humans being born every year, with their individual inordinate expectations of food, clothing, entertainment and travel not to mention other goods. The only possible solution to the planet's warming is unthinkable: a large-scale thermonuclear war that will chill the earth for a long time and rid it of the superfluous species once known as homo sapiens.
6
Climate change is a complex problem. In my opinion, having followed the scientific literature since the 80’s, it is very clearly occurring, and reasonably well understood. If you doubt this statement, I would encourage you to go to your nearest academic library, and review what has been published since about 1983 in the journals Science and Nature.
It is highly probable, but not definite that we can manage the problem to limit the most disrupting consequences with today’s technology. It would not be easy, and would require a coordinated effort from the public, the government, and the private sector.
Additionally, research into new technologies, particularly with respect to energy storage and transmission might further improve our ability to manage the problem.
It would likely change how we live. Smaller vehicles perhaps, a change in diet, etc. It is unclear to me that it would necessitate lowering our overall standard of living, although in the wealthiest countries that might be necessary.
It would likely have many advantages: cleaner air, better health etc.
The alternative is likely to be very disruptive for almost everyone, and lead to a much greater decrease in the global standard of living.
2
Yes but the origins of climate change are deeply embedded in natural forces aka plate tectonics, the cycles of our Moon and Sun, the tilt of the Earth's axis impact upon ocean and air currents, biological chemosynthesis and photosynthesis plus 'visitors' from space that produce carbon dioxide and methane aka greenhouse gases.
Carbon dioxide has a more persistent and methane a more powerful impact on climate change on our Earth.
While the origins of the past five mass extinctions varied they manifested themselves in evolutionary fit DNA climate change natural selection. And the vertebrate winners of the last were the birds and the bony fish. They did not use any science nor technology to succeed.
But sharks and cephalopods along with the social insects and extremophiles have been doing their victory dances over natural forces capable of extinguishing them for far longer and better on the only planet with life as we know it.
2
Finally, some hope that climate change can be tackled and that we can win this fight for our lives. The NY Times has been great in frequently publishing stories about the effects of climate change. But the stories are always grim, hopeless and they describe catastrophes that I have difficulty getting my brain around, because the size and scope of these problems makes me feel incapable of action. I had lunch with a friend of mine recently who is an environmental writer and she told me that it was too late to tackle this problem because of the domino effects being created. I look at "leaders" like Trump, and that guy in Australia (whose name I don't want to remember) both of whom are trying to increase the use of fossil fuels, and I ask myself if the world hasn't gone completely mad. Thank you for this ray of hope.
3
"Are there reasons now to hope for serious action? Yes: a trifecta of frightening reports in the last year from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the need to act before things spin out of control, on deforestation and other damaging land-use practices, on dying reefs and rising sea levels. Plus: a cascade of natural disasters, including catastrophic wildfires and hurricanes. Plus: the dramatic drop in the cost of producing carbon-free energy like wind and solar power. Plus: well-publicized concerns on the part of every contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, and equally well-publicized efforts by state and local officials, to fill the global leadership vacuum left by President Trump."
Thank you, NYT, for every single word on climate change that you publish. We the People can do something too: Vote, drive electric, recycle, write our reps, gift experiences instead of 'stuff', at least carry our own dang reusable grocery bags. We can't all be Jane Fonda, but I greatly admire her willingness to be arrested for a cause. The grandkids deserve a future with hope too.
3
Wind and solar are very cheap — but only available when the sun shines and wind blows. California can generate almost all its midday power with renewables but needs natural gas plants for 40 to 50% in late afternoon and evening.
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@Kurfco
And it should be pointed out that California gets another 30% in the late afternoon and night from imported power, much of which is generated by burning fossil fuels. Another 10% comes from nuclear and that is slated to be shut down.
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@Kurfco
Can batteries not capture and store solar and wind power for use later in the day?
1
@Kurfco Then price the energy used in late afternoon and evening higher------or watch the seas rise and the land burn.
1
There must be dramatic world wide action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and deal with the impending risks of climate change and global warming. The time is short and the consequences of ignoring its reality would be staggering.
It is imperative that Trump and his Republican enablers be rousingly defeated in the next election and that America resumes world leadership and meets the challenges with a vast program of legislation and policy change from reforestation to
electric cars, and mass transit to end the world’s dependence on fossil fuels. It should be our great challenge and if done with American optimism and energy can be achieved!
3
While it is helpful to instill hopefulness and optimism, there is a danger that comparing the climate change problem to the ozone depletion one will lead to complacency. The technical, economic, and cultural issues involved in solving the climate change problem are many orders of magnitude greater. The size and power of the vested interests opposed to reducing our dependence on fossil fuels is enormous; indeed, they largely control many governments (e.g., in the state of Florida, no employee of the state government is permitted to use the words "climate change" in any document). Unfortunately, if history is any guide, it will
take repeated serious disasters that affect wealthy and powerful people for policies to change.
The only challenges of comparable magnitude I can think of are the Great depression and WWI.
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@seattle expat Typographical error: I meant to write WWII (World War Two)
@seattle expat Typographical error : I intended to write WWII (World War Two)
There is a massive difference between a discrete problem, such as CFCs, and a complex one such as climate change. It IS indeed possible to ban CFCs, and either replace them with an alternative that doesn't have the same negative effects (as far as we can tell at present) or reduce the need for them to 0.
Climate change or rather the supposed causes and the variegated effects of climate change are something altogether different.
On the causal side the problem is that it is not possible to draw a straight line between "a" cause and "an" effect. There are many causes, many even we have probably not yet given the attention and the weight they deserve.
On the effect side we face the challenge that the effects are themselves causes. To take but one example, the reduction of the polar icecaps is a major contributing factor in the reduction of the polar icecaps...
The complex interaction plus the self-sustaining nature of these causes and effects makes it all rather more difficult than saying "let's all work together and ban CFCs".
Again, a simple example. Sea transport is as big a source of exhaust gases as road transport. All the freight being shipped hither and yon, in other words, the blood-flow through the arteries of world commerce, is belching out CO2, SOx, etc., ... What do you propose to do about that?
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Without inclusion of fission nuclear power until we get to the point of viable fusion, there can be no realistic plan to halt global warming or carbon emissions. Talk of a world fuelled by solar panels and wind turbines is a pipe dream. Fusion will happen but we need fission to buy us time until we get there. We cannot currently avoid catastrophe on “renewables” alone. I am so dismayed each time I read a piece that fails to address this glaring truth.
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The ITER fusion reactor in France is due for completion in about 2025 and will be the template for other potential commercial fusion reactors. It'll cost about $20bn to construct.
By contrast the Qatar World Cup will cost about $220bn. For a football tournament.
The money and the skills are there to try and solve climate change. The issue is governments not wanting to do it.
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@Beatrix
What the Chernobyl and Fukushima are you talking about?
Where in Southern California are you volunteering to locate a new nuclear fission power plant?
Where in Southern California are you volunteering to store nuclear fission power plant waste products?
Controlled thermonuclear fusion hasn't progressed far beyond weapons of mass destruction. Harnessing the power of the stars has proven far more difficult than making fire and nuclear reactors for very good science technological reasons.
Fusion generates a lot of energy but requires more than it gives. Containing fusion requires electromagnetism on a stable sustained scale well beyond our foreseeable curious talents.
Matter and anti-matter is far more efficient as a source of energy. But even more 'Star Trek' unlikely. While 'the Force' of 'Star Wars' seems the most fanciful of all.
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@Beatrix
Spot on! It is ironic that the green energy movement has rejected the only green technology that has any chance of reaching carbon neutral electrical production. Those who point back to Chernobyl and Three Mile Island as reasons to fear and reject nuclear energy have allowed their knee-jerk reaction to cloud their critical thinking skills. Nuclear reactor technology has moved well beyond the safety flaws that caused unnecessary panic back in the 80s. The No Nukes movement has done much more harm than good.
16
The climate change crowd wants to stop global warming unless they have to change anything about their lifestyle.
To wit:
Will they not turn on their holiday lights this season ?
Will they accept trade negotiations rather than free trade with repressive China even if it means the cost of consumption rises?
Will they give up their SUV's if they live in a clime with 6 months of winter weather?
Will they substitute soy beans for meat?
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@bob. without characterizing your remarks as that would not be constructive please consider this: when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor the proper response was not to pick fights with each other. The proper response was to take the problem head on with full attention, pragmatism, determination and effort.
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The pitfall of environmentalism is clear. If it is taken seriously, and its pursued to its logical conclusion, one ends up with a radical political critique of the capitalist growth model and the traditional model of social stratification. Environmentalism and capitalism are incompatible, a point that has yet to be fully addressed and internalized along a broad political front in America today.
If the environmental movement seeks to start before it's too late, there must become a broadly based political movement oriented towards fundamental economic reconstruction and educational/cultural re-orientation.
At this late stage of development, militant direct action (mimicking the 1960s) would prove futile and perhaps fatal to the civilized social environment. Therefore, its best that societies adapt by changing their cultural practices and ethical values. Culture can evolve our behaviors and therefore can change our environment. (Cultural Evolution = sustainable environmental action).
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@Spencer V. Dossman But that only works when government actually works ie we don't dump our scientists like Trump has and we enact policies like the Clean Air and Water acts and we have regulations to make our industries more in line with those ethics am I right?
1
Would that science were as respected, and the EPA as responsible, today as they were decades ago.
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@NM
It's not the EPA on whole that's irresponsible, blame the current head of the EPA as well as the climate denier in the WH.
9
The article is an example of a false equivalency. The nonlinear nature of climate change, including its many tipping points, anyone of which could lead to global catastrophe, is in no way equivalent to the relative simplicity of the ozone problem. The article demonstrates a serious lack of understanding of how much more dangerous climate change is than is the ozone problem.
It may already be too late to mitigate the damage that will be caused by climate change. The human species may adapt for a while, but the future looks bleak for our technology based, consumption addicted society.
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@Impedimentus There are no "tipping points" in terms of climate change. The earth is ultimately a negative feedback system (as are virtually all natural systems). In its history, the earth has seen much more extreme temperatures and CO2 concentrations, yet it has always regressed to a very moderate climate.
The idea of a "tipping point" is simply hyperbole to try and scare people - it has no basis in science.
9
@Impedimentus It may already be too late to mitigate the damage that will be caused from climate change, but even if we could reverse temperature change, we'd be left with the problem of plastics in the ocean, and diminishing forests.
If the world's population expands to 10 billion, which is what it is predicted to do by 2060, the oceans will be so full of plastic that seafood industries collapse, and then we'll be left with just the farms for food production. But the farms will have bad yields because of drought and diminished rainfalls.
5
@Frank MacGill I, for one, (sadly almost the only one) agree emphatically, "plastics in the ocean" are second only to climate change. I believe we are far beyond the tipping point with plastic waste, (microplastics are so prevalent in the environment that we all consume the equivalent of a credit card’s worth of them every week). What is big petroleum's response? Invest $180 billion dollars to open new plastic production plants and INCREASE production by 40%.
Where is the outcry? Where are the protests? Plastic never goes away. Increasing production is insanity.
15
The obfuscation by the fossil fuel industry is continuing unabated, not withstanding their hypocritical, feel good media ads, as they lavishy continue their lobbying efforts to a very receptive political establishment headed by the cheerleader and climate change denier-in-chief. The political solution needed to seriously address climate change is out of reach with the present cast of politicians. The climate change threats to health, economic losses and eventual survival are not as compelling and immediate as that of ozone depletion or foul water and air to the average voter, who sees more meaningful issues in healthcare, well-paying jobs, education, equality issues, social justice, etc. Only when climate change bubbles to the top issue will voters succeed in giving congress and a new president the mandate to approach climate change on a scale of commitment represented by the Great Depression or both world wars. Even if the Democrats win the presidency and a majority of both houses they are foremost bound to address the issues they mainly campaigned for, namely those of most concern to their voters. Climate will get its day in the sun, but not to the extend needed to have a major impact. For that, an overwhelming majority of climate change champions need to be in Congress, which may be achievable in subsequent elections. Of course this is premised on a defeat of Trump and his obstructionists fellow congressional supporters. A failure here is an unrecoverable disaster.
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Rudy,
You have some great points here. What I might add however is that we all have the power, as individuals, to change our communities which then changes our world. National politicians cannot do this alone. It's takes all of us to cohere around a new consciousness around change and complexity. Once we understand the systematic challenges underway, we can then empower our families, our churches, and our local governments to act accordingly. Our civilization can transcend the current condition, but it takes human togetherness through community action that will sustain lasting and meaningful change.
Good Luck,
Alex
5
@Alex
Although what you suggest is quiet helpful, it in itself is by far not sufficient to seriously confront climate change, although such sustained community action will have an impact on voters, who hopefully elect the right individuals to Congress. The US government needs to be fully onboard in order to implement laws towards a carbon neutral future, curtailment of greenhouse gas emissions and, very importantly, assume world leadership in the international effort to address this existential threat. And do it by example by both rapidly reducing our emissions through technical innovation and share these technologies with the rest of the world, as we are but 4.3% of the world's population, yet spew out 15% of the world's greenhouse gases (mostly CO2).
We are experiencing ever greater shocks and surprises in the social and physical environment, and these rapid shifts (or bifurcations) are not due to our civilizational blindness or ignorance. The Earth is literally transforming under our feet.
Climate change is just one of many changes under way, though it is the most visible. Connected with climate change are a host of other factors that are just as prone to change as the ecology, in the economic, social, political, and cultural arenas.
The bottom line is that, in more
respects than one, proceeding further as we have up till now takes us to a catastrophic bifurcation: to a fateful tipping point.
We either change with our
changing world—which we can do if we acquire the understanding and
master the will—or we risk global crisis' and ultimate breakdown.
Will humanity wait for a natural or man made disaster that kills hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of people to come up with the will to change? It may then be too late. We must, and still can, head towards a timely change in values, vision, and behaviors.
4
We are experiencing ever greater shocks and surprises in the social and physical environment, and these rapid shifts (or bifurcations) are not due to our civilizational blindness or ignorance. The Earth is literally transforming under our feet.
Climate change is just one of many changes under way, though it is the most visible. Connected with climate change are a host of other factors that are just as prone to change as the ecology, in the economic, social, political, and cultural arenas.
The bottom line is that, in more
respects than one, proceeding further as we have up till now takes us to a catastrophic bifurcation: to a fateful tipping point.
We either change with our
changing world—which we can do if we acquire the understanding and
master the will—or we risk global crisis' and ultimate breakdown.
Will humanity wait for a natural or man made disaster that kills hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of people to come up with the will to change? It may then be too late. We must, and still can, head towards a timely change in values, vision, and behaviors.
The government/Poor leadership 35%
Immigration 19%
Healthcare 6%
Race relations/Racism 5%
Unifying the country 4%
Poverty/Hunger/Homelessness 4%
Environment/Pollution 3%
That's a partial list of voter concerns mentioned in the article. Front and center is the government by a large margin, then immigration, fostered by the Administration's fear tactics. Those two alone account for 54% of what concerns voters.
We'll never get to first base addressing climate change, or healthcare, or any other voter concerns, until we can get a functional bipartisan Congress and institute comprehensive immigration legislation.
And I see no daylight for years to come.
24
@cherrylog754 I don't see daylight either. I see a train heading our way at the end of this tunnel, and it looks like we aren't going to make it to the exit on time before it smashes right into us. I do think, though, as that train destroys civilization and death spreads from the brown people to the poorer of the white people (say the bottom 90%), there will be calls for action (actually more like screams). Of course, by then who knows if we'll even be able to reel it in. The whole point is that if we don't act, we lose that ability as the system has a bunch of domino-effects built-in, half of which have probably already started. So it's not like we weren't warned. Whatever we get is our fault and our faults alone. And if this destroys us, good riddance; we weren't much more than a pest anyway.
1
Too little will arrive way too late. The fossil industries and others that profit from carbon have already captured much of the media and national government. Trump will not vacate the Oval Office no matter what. The analogy to ozone will not fit.
The New York Times coverage of climate catastrophe has been breathtaking. Keep it up, please!
21
I would say though, that the coverage by the 'Guardian' on this issue is superior.. and there is no paywall.
1
The issue with increased atmospheric CO2 is rapidly being solved and will eventually be completely solved by technology. The primary fuel sources for most electricity today (coal and natural gas) have non-zero costs. In contrast, the primary fuel source for renewables (hydropower, PV and wind) is free (sunlight). The technology for generating electricity from renewables is improving rapidly, and their costs are likewise decreasing rapidly. The cost of land based wind is now less than coal and the same as combined cycle gas (levelized cost, no subsidies included). Storage technologies are also becoming much cheaper via improved technology. As a consequence, coal is dying and natural gas will likewise begin a decline in 10-20 years. This will take care of the 2 primary methods humans generate CO2 - electricity and ground transportation (via conversion to electric vehicles). Air transportation is trickier since it is unclear if one can ever replace hydrocarbons with electrical storage due to the much greater energy density of hydrocarbons compared to batteries.
Nuclear power plants, especially if combined with fuel reprocessing to eliminate the problem of getting rid of spent fuel, would provide another option. Especially if one views increased atmospheric CO2 as a problem that must be "solved" within 10ish years, nuclear is the only feasible option.
13
Yes! We need to address climate change with technology and science. Trying to change human habits and cultures will not help in the necessary time frame of 20 to 50 years. Fission, renewables, improved energy storage and distribution and as much efficiency and recycling efforts as can be mustered are half of the solution. The other half is aggressive development of evolving technologies like carbon capture and a deep dive into cutting edge physics for that new energy source that lies just beyond our current knowledge. A massive effort on a national and global scale to develop the technologies that could give us more clean affordable energy than we could imagine. Fossil fuel might push back initially but if they were in the development and profit loop they could throw a lot of resources at the effort. The scientists and engineers of these industries understand what is happening. The U.S. Military understands as well and they are developing plans and contingencies based on projections of climate caused disruption. We got The Bomb first because we knew failure was not an option - we went to the Moon first because we were inspired and excited by the science and engineering (and wanted to beat the Russians). The Nation and the World will enthusiastically join the effort when they understand there is an opportunity to move forward into a New Energy Future. Who would object to a future where we could still move forward with great energy without unintentionally destroying ourselves.
3
There are times when the press needs to feel a calling to elevate to being the sensitive antennae for all mankind. Due to the factors listed in this editorial, there is no practical navigation to reducing fossil fuels in sufficient amounts, in a sufficient time frame. Just when public opinion on reduction might be hitting a tipping point, it is probably "too little, too late"
Far more attention needs to be directed to focus on carbon capture before we miss the opportunity of that solution as well. A supreme John F. Kennedy "Moon Shot" program needs to be planned and funded to develop the vast technology that needs to be deployed to save our common home.
46
The most effective carbon capture technology we have is trees.
2
This article on the climate crisis is far too sappy. Yes - we can diminish the catastrophic impacts of the climate emergency. This is indeed a climate crisis, an emergency. It will take far more complex and systemically disruptive actions than the ozone holes.
Though many major crisis are staring at us, climate is the mother of all, in history. If we do not get this right, all life on earth will suffer greatly, including humanity.
Our cultures of short-term and individualistic thinking, maximizing short term profits at ALL costs is killing us, and we continue bowing to the "G-d's" of greed for more money and stuff. It is our behaviors and culture that's causing the climate emergency.
The Exxon's and other fossil fuel giants have been lying about what their own scientists have been telling them for 50 years - burning fossil fuels is heating our planet at a pace never experienced by life on earth and we keep smiling because the stock market is rising. What this really means is that we are accelerating the problem and we continue to cheer.
There be new technologies to help. We'd better not wait and hope - we've got to move with urgent action by all of humanity and all enterprises and institutions. If we just keep on doing what we've been doing we're cooked. Urgent Action Right Now. Trump is the world's laggard and buffoon. China's per capital emission are 1/3 that of the U.S.; India is far lower than China. Voting for trump in 2020 is a fools errand and disaster.
66
I agree. I'm 62 years old college-educated I realize how dire and real the climate crisis is but I believe we can overcome it and I think the most likely outcome is that we will overcome. I think we have it in this and I think we have no choice but to tackle this issue head-on create new and Innovative technology that can solve it. I do believe
3
@dbw75
Believe, believe: You are a follower of a cargo cult methinks. Fundamental change in every imaginable way for everyone is de rigueur for mankind. Now, unless of course we don't care for life.
Too many crucial issues demand our attention. We write letters to end family separation, march to oppose gender and racial bias, attend town halls to ensure access to affordable health care. In this seemingly endless cycle of urgency one issue that almost never makes it to the top of the To-Do List is action on climate change. This year’s IPCC Reports on Global Warming make it clear that this must change. The timeline of “some day” has been moved up to now.
In considering action on climate change we can use not only our voices but also our hands. We can and should march, write letters – and - make choices right now that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Many of us can choose to carpool or take public transportation to work. We can opt in to green energy sources for heating and lighting our homes. We can consider the carbon footprint of products that we buy. We can plant trees that sequester carbon and cool our urban environments. Without spending any extra time or money we can eat more vegetables and less meat – a choice that has health benefits in addition to climate benefits. Every single action that every individual takes makes the problem a little bit smaller. And every action we take is both empowering and sets an example for those around us.
And every single one of us needs to go to the polls in 2020 and vote for candidates who know climate change is real, and who are ready to join us in action.
147
@A. Moore : These things, that you mention, can and need to happen. They only can happen, however, with government leadership pushing us that way -- and most important of those governments is that in the USA.
What happens at the polls in 2020 will determine that posssibility.
5