In the lead-up to the 2014 Climate Summit at the United Nation, hundreds of thousands of people around the world gathered to let world leaders know that they need to come to an agreement to drastically cut global greenhouse gas emissions. A handful of Bowen Islanders joined the thousands that convened on the CBC Plaza in Vancouver, to make their feelings on the subject known.
In the coming weeks, the Undercurrent will feature a series of essays written by Bowen Islanders on this subject. The first is by conservation ecologist, Alejandro Frid:
To say that climate change dominates my psyche would be an understatement. The whole rigmarole already led me to hand-cuffs and the interior of a jail, when two years ago I joined an economist, a doctor, biologists and other citizens in blockading a train loaded with coal—the worse climate-destroying fossil fuel.
Why? Because as a parent, human being and scientist, I know that we’ve had a very sweet deal for the last 10 thousand years. One hundred centuries of just the right amount of ice-caps to regulate our sea levels, just the right amount of Arctic sea ice to guarantee the air circulation patterns that bring good conditions for agriculture, just the right ocean chemistry to allow the many fish and plankton that support us to thrive - we are fortunate to have experienced a uniquely friendly stage in Earth’s history which allowed civilization to develop. And letting go of such a sweet deal is just not in my nature.
Earth used to be hell. All that began to change about fifty million years ago, when the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2)—a gas that traps heat by keeping solar radiation from bouncing back to space—declined within Earth’s atmosphere. And so the planet cooled, slowly and steadily, from a place once hostile to many of today’s life forms to the friendlier planet that we now know.
Yet it took humans only a blink of the eye, in Earth history terms, to turn atmospheric chemistry upside down. For the last couple of centuries we have been powering our great potential for genius by exploiting energy stored within fossil fuels. But we have barely awakened to the fact that, in that process, we release CO2 back into the atmosphere.
Which is why I ask myself, almost every day: Ever try to de-acidify an ocean?
As a marine ecologist, I know that the ocean absorbs a third of the CO2 that we pump into the atmosphere and, consequently, is becoming more acidic. The larvae of many species that feed us, from fishes to urchins to oysters, cannot tolerate this change in water chemistry, so populations of these life-forms may be entering a downward spiral. Warming and lower oxygen levels are change the distribution, physiology and body sizes of fishes, already catapulting many species toward extinction.
The problem of ocean acidification is inseparable from that of climate warming because both processes feed each other in synergistic ways. As the oceans acidify, they increase the rate at which they release into the atmosphere another greenhouse gas, dimethylsulphide. Through this process, acidification could boost global warming 10 percent above that caused by CO2 emissions. And as the oceans warm, marine phytoplankton—microscopic plants that produce half of the oxygen that we breathe and remove half of the atmospheric CO2 that is fixed into plant tissues—alter their individual cells in ways that demand more nitrogen to function. Because nitrogen abundance in the ocean varies geographically and over time, instances in which large numbers of phytoplankton cannot find enough nitrogen for photosynthesis could occur in the future. The potential result is what microbiologist Jack A. Gilbert calls “a catastrophic positive feedback loop,” leading to more atmospheric CO2 and more warming and more acidification and more CO2 and…the loop continues, ad nauseam.
The ocean is where huge portions of humanity find most of their food, and where the majority of living things that occupy our planet originated and still live. To the fossil fuel industry and its political supporters, losing this foundation of life on earth has been—so far—nothing but collateral damage in the name of business.
But, fortunately, there are brilliant economists and engineers telling us that Harper-style “drill baby drill” delusional approaches to running an economy on fossil fuel exploitation are akin to insisting that the Earth is flat. “Better Growth, Better Climate”, a just-published report by the UN, the OECD group of rich countries, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, makes it clear that shifting our focus away from fossil fuels and towards addressing climate change will lead to an economic boom. Stanford engineer Mark Jacobson is among the many number crunchers showing that barriers to large-scale use of renewable energies are “primarily social and political, not technological or economic.” And economist Mark Jaccard reminds us that “(w)hen the British Columbia government cancelled one natural gas plant and two coal plants, the resulting hydro, wind, and wood waste projects created twice as many jobs.”
It is true that current manufacturing processes for solar panels, wind turbines and other infrastructure for renewable energy require fossil fuels. Oil lobbyists like to repeat that point until the cows come home. But—as others have pointed out—that apparent contradiction only clarifies the path ahead. The obvious thing to do is this: Use fossil fuels already filling existing pipelines strategically, allocating most of them towards building the transition to renewable energy at a global scale.
Not being one to water down my message, I must tell you that we already have messed up the sweet climate deal that babied us for the last 10 thousand years. More frequent and extreme droughts and storms already are becoming the new global normal. We are on to something much less pretty now, but I would not get upset about that. The opportunities to steer ourselves towards the path of greater resilience are still here. And that is why we need each other more than ever before.
So let’s vote and organize ourselves to turn politicians into people who act to protect our climate and ecosystems. Let’s reshape our life-styles in ways that lower our carbon footprint. (I was tempted to give you a “how to” list here, but don’t you hate it when people get over-prescriptive on you?) Above all, let’s stay reverent for what we can still protect. (Otherwise, why bother?).
Climate scientists Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows have written, “The world is moving on and we need to have the audacity to think differently and conceive of alternative futures.”
I know we can do this.
