I keep coming back to why I am writing The Steep Clime Quartet book series. The answer I keep returning to is that I want to understand what climate change means for me and my fellow citizens. I want to develop a clearer sense of how to think about climate change and what consequences of climate change I face and what attitude and actions about climate change I should pursue.
I wish that climate change wasn’t a thing, or, given the reality of climate change, that we could act smartly and fix global warming—and reverse it—in two shakes of the lamb’s tail. Unfortunately, of course, there is an ever-deepening sense of what needs to be done to reverse global warming, and to accomplish this we will require the number of tail shakes to be increased by many orders of magnitude. We face a long haul just to halt our contribution to the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. There are some who still think the Paris Climate Accords goals of the IPCC may be met, but increasingly, constraining global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius looks unlikely even if we can only guess exactly where the thermometer rise will stop. From all appearances it looks like we’re pretty much already at 1.5 degrees Celsius. Furthermore, the prospect for meeting the 2030 GHG emissions reductions set forth by the IPCC is likely to push well beyond that target date. Even if we were to meet the Paris Climate Accords goals on time, there is still the problem of the long persistence of GHG already in the atmosphere, which carries consequences across hundreds of years of continued global warming.
Hey, maybe Exxon really will extract CO2 directly from the atmosphere at scale and sequester CO2 in their old used up oil and gas wells in the Gulf, or some other technology will suck out the fossil fuel snake poison from the atmosphere.
Yeah, right.
It is uncomfortable to conclude our best efforts will fall short of actual correction of global warming and that we’re likely to continue experiencing climate change and all the attendant destruction, economic costs, and, oh yeah, deaths, for decades and centuries. The good news is that if we can constrain GHG emissions world-wide and quickly, we will likely live in the sort of world we’re in today, and that is the good news, even if you’ve listened to the news lately, because it is better to have today’s climate change problems than tomorrow’s should we not make enough progress. There are plenty of research and academic publications available that tell the dire tale of tomorrow’s climate change problems, and one such just out is from BioScience, with a journal article from October 8, 2024, titled “The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth,” by William J Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Jillian W Gregg, and eleven other contributors I’m too lazy to include here. Here’s the start of the report:
We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis. For many years, scientists, including a group of more than 15,000, have sounded the alarm about the impending dangers of climate change driven by increasing greenhouse gas emissions and ecosystem change (Ripple et al. 2020). For half a century, global warming has been correctly predicted even before it was observed—and not only by independent academic scientists but also by fossil fuel companies (Supran et al. 2023). Despite these warnings, we are still moving in the wrong direction; fossil fuel emissions have increased to an all-time high, the 3 hottest days ever occurred in July of 2024 (Guterres 2024), and current policies have us on track for approximately 2.7 degrees Celsius (°C) peak warming by 2100 (UNEP 2023). Tragically, we are failing to avoid serious impacts, and we can now only hope to limit the extent of the damage.
This and many other reports and studies have made it clear that we need our best actions implemented as soon as possible, albeit at a rate of change that doesn’t collapse societies and lead to the large death rolls such collapses can entail. Getting the rate of change right for GHG reductions is the sharp edge of climate progress, but one measured in years and decades and decades and decades.
What do people do with this information? Since the most effective large-scale efforts to address global warming come from governments, we can pay attention to politics and make every effort to elect pro-climate progress legislators and executives at every level. I live in Massachusetts, which, I’m pretty sure, is the leading state on climate progress legislation on a per capita basis (California takes the cake for size of overall climate progress budgets, of course). Positive climate progress stances are held by the vast majority of elected officials here, from selectboard and city council members, to state representatives and senators, to the governor herself. Our U.S. Senators are Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and most of our U.S. Representatives are likewise hot on cooling GHG emissions. There are other states doing well in this regard, too, but too many legislators failing to sufficiently address GHG emissions are still being sent or returning to Congress from too many states. Today, too many of these legislators remain in the increasingly morally criminal state of climate change denial or otherwise act to delay climate progress, perhaps at the direction of Big Oil lobbyists and dark money PACs.
Still, there’s some comfort one can take with major advances for climate progress through huge Federal bills such as the Infrastructure Act of 2021 and The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, and there are other victories, too. The good news is that the US is already dropping its levels of GHG emissions. The bad news is that most other nations (excepting some European nations) are still increasing the amount of GHG emissions produced.
But, of course, things take time and not surprisingly, trying to reverse two hundred-plus years of ever-increasing human production of fossil fuel-based GHG emissions will take a lot of time. The work of transitioning the world economy to clean and renewable energy is complex, with solar, wind, and energy storage likely taking the lead. Big transmission infrastructure projects and smartening the grid are other pieces of the solution. All these efforts are multi-decades-long in nature and the impetus to start early rather than later is obvious.
There is also a growing need to address negative consequences of climate change—just look at Helene and Milton, in the last two weeks—and this means mitigation and resiliency work, and such work carries costs even as rebuilding post-disaster results in staggeringly high bills due. Estimates of damage from these two storms is over half-a-trillion dollars, and it is early days yet.
Global warming is expensive. The economy has already been shelling out big sums, with the World Economic Forum estimating that “extreme weather, climate and water-related events caused almost $1.5 trillion of economic losses in the decade to 2019, up from $184 billion in the 1970s, according to a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report. The real figures are likely to be even higher, as many losses go unreported.”
Estimates for future climate change-related loss in the world economy are quantified in an analysis undertaken by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, which published an article in Nature this year. From Potsdam Institute’s own website:
Even if CO2 emissions were to be drastically cut down starting today, the world economy is already committed to an income reduction of 19 % until 2050 due to climate change, a new study published in “Nature” finds. These damages are six times larger than the mitigation costs needed to limit global warming to two degrees. Based on empirical data from more than 1,600 regions worldwide over the past 40 years, scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) assessed future impacts of changing climatic conditions on economic growth and their persistence.
But, again, what do people do with this information?
One big challenge is that people aren’t used to or maybe not adept at thinking long term. Day-to-day concerns press in on us: Do I have money to cover the rent? The car needs fixing. I need to go see the dentist. What will I cook tonight, or should I meet my old high school chum in town for the night? Dammit, I thought I had more clean clothes in the closet, and I’m due at work in 30 minutes. Oh no, I forgot my wife’s birthday!
We aren’t predisposed to add to such prosaic concerns such things as figuring out how best act to help lower the carbon emissions in the world, especially when the timeframe for such projects spans decades.
We should be attentive. After all, it could be my house that gets flooded when an 11-inch rain deluge in the span of a few hours hits where I live. After all, that in-law apartment addition for an aging parent who needs to be close is more expensive or takes longer or both because heatwaves disrupt outdoor labor more and more frequently. And what about the kids? I’m in my later stage of life and chances are I’ll be able to cope well enough with climate change consequences likely over the next couple of decades, but as the years add on and emissions remain too high, the sort of heatwave that delays my in-law addition becomes something affecting day-to-day life for younger people and their kids. Not to mention the possibility–one that increases in reverse proportion to our lack of climate change action–that the pressures on our complex society and economy could be enough to tip us into chaos.
I suppose that I can offer the kids advice: Don’t buy oceanfront property. Don’t move to Florida, or the Southeast, or the Southwest. Save money for increasing food prices and energy prices and insurance premiums and taxes for infrastructure repair, mitigation projects, and resiliency programs. Take the time to understand the hydrology of your surroundings and pay close attention to weather forecasts. Plant trees. Get an electric vehicle—assuming you live somewhere you need one. Do what you can to make your residence energy efficient, so that you can keep cool enough or warm enough without having to break the bank. Have health care coverage that includes Zika, Dengue, and malaria options.
But kids, right? Will they listen?
Come to think of it, the advice is good for me too.
But there’s more:
- Understand that climate progress will take years and decades and even then, the best result will be continuing the problems we face today, instead of something far worse.
- Understand that the transition to clean energy and everything that this requires will cost money and that some of that cost will be passed on to you, either in rate increases or taxes or both.
- Understand that climate change makes everything more expensive and increasingly so.
- Understand that there will be food production problems and thus more expensive food.
- Understand there will be higher cost for insurance of various sorts, or, worse, no affordable insurance, so disasters will be more expensive to you, or even not recoverable.
- Understand that you are involved in decades-long projects to minimize the climate change pressures on our complex society and economy.
- Understand that the best deal around is the cost being asked of us all to rectify the centuries’ long dumping of GHG that has altered the biosphere.
- Understand that your refusal to comprehend the climate change reality makes it that much more likely for society-wide unrest or even collapse.
- Understand that doing nothing or too little will be the most expensive option of all.
So, vote for climate progress candidates like your life depends on it.
Step up in every way you can to join the great fight of our age: Healing the Earth.
Progress is possible, joy is a choice, and helping others is the best way to help yourself.
-end of sermon-