Today, June 1st, marks the start of meteorological summer in the Northern Hemisphere. It also marks the day that President Trump fulfilled one of his campaign promises to withdraw the United States (the most significant greenhouse gas polluter per capita in the world) from the Paris Accord which was agreed to by nearly all parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). We join Syria (which I presume was a little too busy to contemplate participating) and Nicaragua (which may be still trying to figure out how to spend all of that Contra-generated funding from the Reagan era).
But I digress. The Paris Climate Accord has been mischaracterized by so many denialists and critics that it does not make sense for me to dispute their farcical arguments here. They've been sufficiently debunked by so many already. The President's speech was full of "America First" type sentiments, and included a suggestion that we could renegotiate terms. Balderdash!
The terms under the Paris Accord allow nations to set flexible non-binding goals that can be revisited. The economic doomsday scenario which we would be led to believe is not supportable by any economic argument that has precedent in reality or in validated modeling. There are far too many human factors involved for anyone to predict the consequence of this action today on other nations.
The coal jobs are not coming back in the US. We will continue to rely on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future, and nuclear power and less harmful forms of renewable energy are becoming cheaper and more competitive when all costs of production and utilization are factored in, including environmental degradation (which does happen) and environmental restoration (which is often left by the purveyors of the resource extraction to the weak state regulators). But we must move towards a carbon-free energy system, and do so in a generation. We now have people in charge of EPA, the Department of Interior, and Department of Energy who are implementing presidential directives to remove environmental protections and energy sustainability programs which could accelerate the decarbonization that is required for us to provide for future generations' well-being and yes, even economic and environmental justice. Environmental education programs are being eliminated across the board.
President Trump says that he is responding to the voters in Pittsburgh, not Paris. He apparently did not check the election results very carefully. Allegheny County voted 56% for Hilary Clinton and 40% for Donald Trump. Oh, that's right - data mean nothing to our president and his party. Pittsburgh has transformed into a very dynamic place from the place I first visited when I went to a ballgame there at Forbes Field in the early 1970s. That was a time when the plants and mills were running full force, polluting air and water and soil at unprecedented levels as the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Acts were beginning to have full force of law. Republicans and Democrats worked together to ensure that the Cuyahoga River would not catch fire any more and that places like Love Canal in New York would not happen again and could eventually get cleaned up. I grew up in New York and developed a love for the rivers in Westchester County (where I grew up) and Orange County (where my family moved when I was finishing high school). The Hudson River was where I first met Pete Seeger and the Delaware River was a more wild place that was incredible. The Susquehanna ran through Oneonta where I first went to college, and then, eventually I got to Oregon, where the rivers (now) run clean and reliably, for now.
Scientists proved that acidic rainfall in New England had its origins in large part in the factories in the Ohio Valley. This provided an opportunity to list (now) six pollutants to be regulated to protect air quality. Many did not believe that human activity could change atmospheric composition. But the reduction of source pollutants led to improved air quality.
Then scientists (including some in Oregon) found out that stratospheric ozone (O
3, yes, one of those greenhouse gases but also essential to reduce harmful ultraviolet rays reaching the surface) was depleted by human-produced gases used in aerosols and cooling systems. The chemicals used were creating significant ozone depletion once the polar night was over and by international agreement, the Montréal Protocol was established to remove these harmful chlorofluorocarbons from further production (albeit way too slowly). As a result, the rather poorly named ozone hole is finally showing signs of recovery. Another example that manmade composition changes that create negative consequences can be reversed.
The anthropogenic greenhouse gas problem is more difficult, but scientists have known about its dangers for a long time. Some of these gases are naturally occurring. Some are also very long-lived (like carbon dioxide, CO
2). Even the US Supreme Court has ruled that EPA has the authority to regulate it. But, like mercury, another harmful element in the atmosphere (much of it has origins in smelting and burning coal), industry groups keep fighting rational controls. And temperature rises, because greenhouse gases absorb energy in the infrared, effectively trapping heat in the atmosphere. Ocean absorption leads to increased acidity. Land use patterns change to more intense human activity that reduces the biosphere's ability to remove carbon.
Basic science related to climate involves physics, chemistry, biology, meteorology, oceanography, and pedology for a complete picture. There are so many so-called experts out there who claim to know the climate system, but it is indeed a complex beast. Scientists don't have all of the answers. We do work to build and validate models which can both reproduce past climates based on observations, and then produce future projections that can provide some measure of confidence. There are also economists who understand the basic science problem enough to know, with some ability to guide us in terms of costs and human behavior to guide a methodology which includes building different scenarios. The models are not perfect, but they typically
underestimate the negative climate impacts. And the consensus governmental reports coming from the IPCC typically aver quite conservative and get adjusted every five years or so, to provide even more problematic impacts, guided by actual science. The scare tactics used by industry groups resort to economic forecasts that have no basis in reality and aren't subjected to the same kind of forecast verification rigor used in the climate science community.
The American public supports rational action on sustainable energy development and climate change. The Grand Old Party has devolved into a selfish group of corporate-sponsored anti-regulation anti-science hypocrites who yell "states rights" when it comes to protection from government overreach, but are happy to develop federal policy that tromps on other individual citizen's constitutional protections guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. I hope that the lawsuit filed related to the public trust doctrine by Our Children's Trust is successful. It will play out right here in Eugene. I'll be there.
But with people like Donald Trump, Ryan Zinke, Scott Pruitt, James Inhofe, Ted Cruz, Lamar Smith, and our own Greg Walden in charge of government policy on science, energy and the environment, I've lost my ability to be rationally optimistic about the future. But before I put out a call for action, I'd like to express my displeasure with those on the fringes of the environmental movement who claim all kinds of impacts that are not (at least not yet) attributable to human-caused climate change. By shouting at the wind every time there is an unusual weather event (and weather ≠ climate) and blaming it on climate change, you put doubt in the minds of your own rationality and lend credence to the denialists out there who don't accept the scientific evidence for human-caused climate change. Not all climate change is attributable to us. But a lot, in fact, most of it, is. Fortune 500 companies get it. Our own Department of Defense gets it as a realistic threat.
Now I'll make the call - please, whether you are a scientist, educator, or just someone interested. Don't disengage - keep trying. It may feel like you are butting your head up against the wall. Be respectful. Find out where the confusion lies with people you talk to and try to encourage them. Don't proselytize, rather, engage respectfully. We won't convert everyone. We will convert some, and maybe people important enough to vote, or teach, or write, or research. After all, it worked on me over 25 years ago.
