It Is Five Minutes To Environmental Midnight. We Need To Act - Urgently
We are - at the same time - thrillingly close and sickeningly far from solving our planetary fever. The world's leaders huddled in New York City yesterday to discuss man-made global warming, in a United Nations building that will soon be underwater if they fail. They all know what has to happen: their scientists have told them, plainly and urgently.
As man-made warming rises up to 2.4 degrees Celsius, all sorts of awful things happen - whole island-states in the South Pacific will drown, for example - but we can stop it. If we turn off the warming gases, the temperature will stabilize. But if we go beyond 2.4 degrees, global warming will run away from us, and we will have lost the Stop button. The Amazon rainforest will dry out and burn down, releasing all the carbon stored in the trees; the vast amounts of warming gases stored in the Arctic will be belched into the atmosphere; and so three degrees will turn ineluctably to four degrees, which will turn to five degrees, and the planet will rapidly become a place we do not recognize.
To stay the right side of this climatic Point of No Return, global emissions need to start falling by 2015 - just six years from now - and drop by 85 percent by 2050. Our leaders need to agree this at the climate talks in Copenhagen in December. The scientific debate is over. The answer is in sight. Indeed, each one of the leaders could feel the solution on their skin and in their hair yesterday: it lies in the awesome power of the sun.
Each day, the sun bombards our planet with 9000 times more power than we need to run every car, warm every home, and power every electrical appliance on earth. If we can capture just a sliver of one percent of it, we can kick fossil fuels into the melting dustbin of history. The technology exists. It is there, waiting for us. Professor Anthony Patt has shown that all the energy Europe needs could be provided by lining 0.3 percent of the Sahara desert - an area the size of Belgium - with concentrating solar power technology. A consortium of Germany's leading corporations is raring to go. They just need the money. It costs a lot up front - $50bn - but this is nothing like as much we would spend chasing the last dribbles of oil into warzones, and defending ourselves as the planet go into meltdown.
Every continent has the same option. The entire energy needs of the US could be met by covering 200 square kilometres of its empty deserts with solar plants: it would cost about ten years' worth of oil purchases, with none of the wars, tyrannies, or blow-back Islamism. China and India have similar options. It is achievable, with the kind of great effort we made to defeat the Nazis. We too could be a great generation - one that came close to the brink, but then came together in a great collective effort to change course. We would leave a lean, green civilization that will run for millennia.
But instead, our leaders are fiddling with the old dirty technologies, too addicted and too addled to move us on and up. In Britain, we are actually turning back to coal, mining 15 percent more this year than last. Professor Jim Hansen, the head of NASA and the world's leading climatologist, calls coal power-stations "death factories" that condemn millions to drown or starve or burn. Across Europe, solar power is being allowed to wither: Germany's biggest solar company, Q-Cells, has seen its stock fall from 100 euros to 10 euros in a year. The other market-leader, Spain, has seen a similarly disastrous fallback.
The World Bank - which receives £400m of your taxes every year - is promoting this soot-streaked vision across the planet. They have just spent $5bn helping poor countries to build power plants that will destroy them. Indeed, it just bankrolled the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in earth - a coal plant in Gujarat, western India.
How can this possibly be defended? US and European governments are engaged in the collective fantasy that coal can be rendered "clean" by "scrubbing" its carbon emissions from the chimney-stacks, and storing them somewhere forever. In the real world, one of the largest "clean coal" pilot plants in operation, the Latrobe Valley's Hazelwood, catches just 0.05 percent of its carbon emissions. Professor Howard Herzog, the renowned expert on this technology, was recently asked what the chances of the technology achieving the cuts we need is. He replied: "Zero."
But a small number of people make a lot of money on coal and oil and gas. A shift to reaping power from the sun and the wind and the waves would render the rocks and barrels they have spent a fortune mining worthless - so they are prepared to pay politicians to keep the system working in their favour, and lavish billions on misinformation campaigns to keep us confused.
You can see this process working most clearly in the United States. Barack Obama is a highly intelligent man who has appointed some of the best scientists in the world to explain to him what needs to happen now. But he is trapped in a political system soaked in petrol. The lackey-filled House of Representatives has passed a woefully inadequate "Cap and Trade" bill, which - if it worked perfectly - would cut emissions by 6 percent below 1990 levels. Even that won't happen: many of the permits oil companies are supposed to pay for will now be given away for nothing, producing no reductions at all. And even this feeble, sickly bill may not make it through Congress.
Meanwhile, China has hinted it would agree to more substantial restraint at Copenhagen if the rich world - responsible for 90 percent of all the warming gases belched into the atmosphere so far - agrees to give 1 percent of its GDP annually to poor countries to adjust to clean fuels. There's a lot to criticise the Chinese dictatorship for, but this isn't one of them. It's a reasonable request for simple justice. Poor countries have done very little to cause this crisis, but they will feel the worst, first. They deserve our reparations. Yet both the EU and US have damned this sane proposal as "totally unrealistic."
So are we as a species condemned to fall into the historical crack between a world powered by fossil fuels, and one powered by the sun? Will the fossil record discovered millions of years from now show we were just too irrational and too primitive to make that leap?
If we despair and wait glumly for the meltdown, we will make it so. Then we will have little choice but to try to survive as best we can in a radically altered landscape. But there is still a slim window in which sanity can prevail - and I believe, perhaps madly, that it can. It will require a global mass movement of extraordinary tenacity, pressuring governments everywhere, and over-powering the fossil fools. We can still change the tale of the twenty-first century from one of collapse to one of a species finding a way to live with its ecosystem, rather than against it.
It can be done. It must be done. Copenhagen is in three months. There, and in the years after when the deal must be implemented, we will learn something profound about ourselves. Are we a great generation - or the worst of all?
Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here . You can email him at johann -at- johannhari.com
To read an archive of Johann's articles about the environment, click here.
Follow Johann Hari on Twitter: www.twitter.com/johannhari101
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Johann Hari seems to know everything about global warming and what it will do to us except the most important thing: it is totally imaginary. There is not now and there never was any anthropogenic global warming. First, satellites that have been continuously measuring world temperatures for the last thirty years simply cannot find that "late twentieth century warming." What they do find are climate oscillations in synch with the well-known ENSO system where a warm El Nino phase alternates with a cool La Nina phase while the mean temperature stays the same. And then the giant super El Nino of 1998 shows up. It turns out that it was caused by Indian Ocean overlow, thanks to a storm surge that raised it up, and it was then brought to South America by the equatorial countercurrent. This was followed shortly by the twenty-first century high, a run of warm years from 2001 to 2007. It ended with a La Nina cooling in 2007 that signifies resumption of the ENSO oscillations we had before 1998. We should expect the next El Nino to peak sometime early 2010. Our climate from now on will be an alternating sequence of ENSO oscillations and there will be no more warming ahead of us. If your scientific theory predicts warming and you get cooling your theory has failed as a scientific theory and you should abandon it. If these guys were honest they would admit this fact but they don't.
The single most effective thing that could be done immediately is to place a $ 1.00 a gallon tax on gas and a tax on all coal fired electricity. We would have enough money to pay for health care, we could close many of the 737 military bases we keep overseas, it would force people to live closer to work and revive the cities, it would encourage mass transit, it would reduce terrorism by cutting off their funding source, it would force us to build high speed rail systems and nuclear power plants thus ending unemployment.. I really don't see any downside. Of course no one has the guts to enact this. The other alternative is to go back to some good old WW!! rationing.
Nice plan, but we are not allowed to build nuclear power plants.
Dude, your clock is wrong. It's WAY past midnight from what I can determine. If all carbon emissions stopped today, the damage done would take decades to reverse. Right now, there is literally no hope that humans can reverse global climate change in time to mitigae the damage. The problem we should be addressing is who survives and why. Millions in Bangladesh will die from floods and hunger. Millions more will die due to drought and disease. Millions will be forced from their ocean front homes inland. Millions more will be forced from their low-rent, low lying homes inland. Fresh water will be threatened as will food for many. This is life as a crap shoot. Some will be in the right place with the right supplies and the right attitude to survive. Others will be prey for survivalists. It's a Mad Max kind of scenario I see. And it does not end well. Not for anyone, anywhere.
Senator Dianne says she does not want solar panels in the California desert.
I am an American conservative, so, naturally, I have an inherent distrust of the global warming doomsayers, but I keep an open mind when it comes to the environment. Even conservatives know we have a responsibility to be good stewards of nature, and to preserve the earth (just as we try to preserve the economy and society) for future generations. Though this article has its share of hyperbole, it does not hurt to look for smart, sustainable, and realistic solutions for preserving the environment, just as long as the solution does not cause more harm than good.
I think Pope Benedict (yes, the Pope) describes an excellent mindset we should take as we consider our options. Foremost is our need to reconsider our lifestyles and our need for solidarity within our communities, between poor and wealthy countries, and between our generation and the next.
His writing on this is summed up here: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/to_till_it_and_to_keep_it/
For the record, Johann Hari is the only H P columnist that I have found that doesn’t constantly and relentlessly use his column for boring partisanship. Good on him.
What don't you believe about global warming?
As Mr. Hari says (though I don't think its as one-sided as he writes), there is much misinformation to keep us confused.
Many scientists believe the world is actually cooling. Many are skeptical about man-made global warming.
I have a hard time believing carbon dioxide (i.e., plant food) is our enemy, especially where man-produced CO2 is a miniscule percentage of our atmosphere.
There is a lot to be skeptical about in the science and there is even more to be skeptical about in the "solutions" proposed by those who stand to profit off of our concern and our sense of urgency (see cap and tax). I am especially skeptical of those who want to put all blame on the number of human lives rather than the types of human lifestyles.
Global warming doom aside, I am not saying we shouldn't change our ways. We are not, generally, good stewards. We perform agricultural rape across many large swaths of land, we pollute our oceans, and we sprawl and consume much of the earth's natural resources, not least of which--its beauty.
There is no anthropogenic global warming (AGW), and there never was any. The only real warning within the last thirty years was the super El Nino of 1998 and its aftermath, the twenty-first century high, a run of warm years from 2001 to 2007. They were not anthropogenic and were caused by Indian Ocean overflow. The pseudo-science spread by Hansen in his 1988 testimony wanted you to believe that the warming that had just started then was caused by greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide we put in the air. But records show that the warming started in 1977 while carbon dioxide had been in the air for twenty years without doing any warming whatsoever. But Hansen wants you to believe that carbon dioxide that was already in the air suddenly came to life in 1977 and decided that this was a good year to start warming up the world. Laws of nature do not permit such arbitrary changes but apparently Hansen had enough voodoo to make it happen. To believe in it is to believe in Hansen's fallacy. And since that testimony was enough to get the IPCC started you can say that IPCC science is founded on voodoo science from Hansen.
>>>I am an American conservative, so, naturally, I have an inherent distrust of the global warming doomsayers,
I don't follow. What is it about conservatism that makes you naturally have a distrust of global warming "doomsayers".
To paraphrase one of your other posts on another topic: global warming is not a partisan issue. Don't make it one.
Congratulations, Mr. Hari. These days I collect especially egregious examples of over-the-top hyperbole regarding global warming and this column is a prize-winner.
“...in a United Nations building that will soon be underwater...whole island states in the South Pacific will drown...global warming will run away from us...The Amazon rainforest will dry out and burn down...the planet will rapidly become a place we do not recognize...this climactic Point of No Return...with the kind of great effort we made to defeat the Nazis...millions to drown or starve or burn...just too irrational and too primitive...”
It's worth remembering that, in 1970, environmentalists and the media warned us that, by 1980, we'd all be wearing gas masks outdoors due to air pollution. (Life magazine even staged a photo shoot in which a gas-mask wearing mother pushed a stroller containing a gas-mask wearing infant. The photo appears on pg 7 here: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_quarterly/v060/60.1dunaway.html) The doomsayers were wrong about that - and about many other similar predictions over the past decades (see here: http://www.reason.com/news/show/27702.html) Judging from the historical record, there is little reason to suppose the current global warming scare is ANY different.
For what it's worth, TripodGirl, the Amazon rainforests will "dry out and burn down" (as Mr Hari suggests) whether we have global warming or not. In fact, it's happening even as we speak, as thousands of acres are destroyed every day to make room for grazing and agriculture. And now that the intoxicating scent of oil and natural gas has been detected in the region, the rainforest will disappear all that much sooner. So, really, we don't need global warming to make life uninhabitable for us; we can do that on our own, thank you very much.
lol, its amazing isnt it
yay tripodgirl!
say.. u got a date for the apocalypse?
Oh for heavens sake. The world is going up in fumes.
My day is never complete till I hear from those who hold the mistaken ideas of a few scientists as proof that all science is bunk. You know, the Ice Age "Gotcha's." The big difference (for those with the intellectual subtlety to get it) is that the larger scientific community did not get behind the Ice Age hypothesis - because at the time there was insufficient data to confirm it. There is, however, sufficient data to confirm the warming hypothesis. Ironically, there is also data to suggest that an Ice Age could very well be the end result of global warming, if the ocean currents are brought to a halt by a disruption of the thermohaline circulation. Which brings up one other thing the "Gotcha's" don't seem to get: everything in the environment is inter-related, so that one event necessarily leads to another. Personally, I'm quite content that the "Gotcha's" will win the day: the sooner humanity becomes extinct, the better off every other living thing on the planet will be. Our only truly unique feature seems to be that, unlike every other creature which overbreeds when conditions are favorable, we keep right on overbreeding even when conditions become unfavorable - and we have to end up shooting one another to effect population control. For the "smartest" creature on earth, we sure as hell are dumb.
Exactly. I read enough articles both pro and con global warming. Latest one yesterday with
the sun's cold spots. A few days earlier an article how the earts is actually cooling. Then again,
one reads how the North Pole is melting. Europe seems to get colder. I am confused and I am
sure so are the scientists. Fact is the earth climate is forever changing and we may very well be right in the middle where we notice it. More Cap & Tax won't do anything but get more money into the coffers. Overpopulation needs to be addressed. This lttle old earth can only deal with so much population, our waste and garbage, where will we put it. Scary are the numbers how much we increased the population from 280 million to nearly 330 million in just a short time.
I used to think about the Salem witch trials and wondered how could they believe such nonsense. Now it's clear.
Of course we have very effective opposition from people who are selling fuel to be burned. They have a repeat market. It is just like cigarettes.
Once you get renewable energy working, it's almost free.
You have to do renewable energy right. The same old dinosaurs will try to scam us. Ethanol is a waste. Passive solar gives a lot of bang for the buck. Plenty of ideas will work great once we start applying them in large enough amounts to get economy of scale -- the cost of solar panels will come down, etc.
We also have to conserve on the consumption side. My refrigerator uses too much power. Ditch the car, use a bicycle for short trips, etc.
the oil companies have given over 10x more money to climate change support research than skeptic research
Huh? Are you seriously saying that the oil companies support climate change research? Somehow, I doubt that they gave anything at all in support of climate change.
I suspect that more than half the population of the US thinks life will be better after death. So, don't expect any meaningful understanding or action. Americans are simply too stupid.
Oh yes, bring in religion when everything else fails. We need a good fairytale!
Give it up.....AGW has been exposed for the ruse it is. Even the IPCC top Scientists are bailing:
http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/Scientists+pull+about+face+global+warming/2010571/story.html
One scientist says that warming MIGHT pause for a while, and you turn that into "IPCC top >scientists< are bailing" ?
Talk about hyperbole!
the emperor has new clothes!!!
A surprising way to reduce dependence on oil and fight climate change is described in the article: 4 Steps to Revive the Auto Industry and the Economy. It will be found on the Aesop Institute website: http://www.aesopinstitute.org
The short article outlines little known breakthrough technology that opens paths to cars that will never need fossil fuel or recharge.
Later, more advanced versions can turn cars into power plants, wirelessly able to sell power to the local utility when parked. Imagine vehicles that can pay for themselves!
The science is revolutionary and will be met with understandable skepticism. However, Rowan University recently published the results of experiments that produced excess heat that can only be explained by a new source of energy. Other laboratories can readily reproduce the work.
The cost-competitive new technologies emerging from this breakthrough science will change most of what is currently believed about energy.
If they are implemented as rapidly as is humanly possible, they offer hope for avoiding a climate cataclysm.
Imagine the impact of cars and trucks that are fuel free. And later models that can pay for themselves!
Thank you, sir. I totally agree with what you're saying here; however, those in control are going to resist this change will all they have because of their greed.
Since similar work is surfacing from other companies, some outside of the USA, and the automotive industry has a vested interest in selling cars and trucks that everyone will want, that problem may be less serious than might be imagined.
Additionally, their children and grandchildren will inherit some horrendous problems, along with everyone else on earth, if rapid action is slowed by their opposition.
The wiser ones may even decide to help change course. Robber barons in this country have occasionally become great philanthropists.
September 25 is "Earth Overshoot" Day, according to the Global Footprint Network, the day we go beyond the resources nature can supply and replenish in a year. We have used up in 10 months what takes nature 12 months.
Bill Maher has a new rule about health care reform: you can't complain about it unless you reform your own health.
We need the same rule for our ecological health: You cannot complain about anyone ELSE and what they are/ are not doing unless you are doing something helpful yourself.
Whatever your gifts, expertise, talent, passion, use it for like's sake. Please.
Our energy problem would be solved if the USA would explore the photosynthesis theory.
I read where a one hour charge from the sun can supply all the energy needed on this globe for one full year and the USA immediately said NO! This shows me that all is based on money and our politicians and leaders are not interested in progress. Proof of that is the energy bill.
35 mpgs by Year 2020, how ridiculous is that?
Very good comment, vippy. I find it absurd that the Pontiac Firebird I bought in '91 (5-speed manual transmission, cruise control, etc.) got better mpg--36 consistently--was better than anything I could find, and afford, 7 years later. The auto industry in this country is in part in such bad condition because of their interdependence on the petrochemical megacorps. The have been resistent to change because they did not want vehicles that got better mileage and were cleaner. We still see that resistence to change for the better from the oil and coal industries; and the auto industry is trying to come around only because their very survival is at stake. The folks in Congress, largely owned and controlled by Big Business, is all for resisting improvement of our country and our world in order to pad their selfish pockets.
If politicians did not have this particular "crisis" to hawk, they would drum up another one. A few that come to mind were: population time-bomb, coming ice age, global warming and now the more inclusive climate change. Still the point remains that even if any of these had been fact, the very idea that governments/politicians could save us is an insult to one's intelligence.
The average person has been misled and is confused about what the current Global Warming debate is about, greenhouse gases. None of which has anything to do
with air pollution. People are confusing Smog, Carbon Monoxide (CO) and the pollutants in
car exhaust with the life supporting, essential trace gas in our atmosphere, Carbon Dioxide (CO2).
Uhm, Romeo, there is a population bomb. It's already happened. Over-population is the single biggest problem that no one in America mentions exactly because this country is in the grip of close-minded ignorance (i.e. unthinking Christians, Jews and Muslims), which depending upon the poll could make up almost 75% of this country (i.e. the percentage who don't "believe in" evolution)!
BTW, what do you mean by "the idea that governments/politicians could save us is an insult." You give yourself away for one of those ignorant, unthinking Rethuglicans. The government is nothing more than an extension of the people. It is no smarter or dumber than the people. I happen to believe that the people can do anything (there I go again invoking an accurate understanding of Christ) they set their minds to, including living in a society where all are taken care of by, and through, the government. In fact, I will go you one further. I believe that charities are one of the biggest wastes and frauds that exist in America today. No charity should exist because it means that the government is not doing its job. See where I am going? The government's job is to take care of the citizens/people. The charities are a redundancy that squanders resources because they are not organized into a unified system. I know I will get resistance on this idea, but I suggest it's reasoning is sound, although I am willing to listen.
"The country is in the grip of close-minded ignorance." (By your estimation up to 75%). "The government is nothing more than an extension of the people." "the governments job is to take care of the citizens/people." Unless I read your "logic" wrong, we the people are being "taken care of " ( which I don't believe is the purpose of government) by overwhelmingly ignorant people. I can't say I disagree. And I offer as evidence your reference to those with whom you disagree as "RETHUGLICANS.
I like the heat, wake me at 8am
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