Climate Change Resolutions for 2024 | Opinion - The Messenger

Climate Change Resolutions for 2024 | Opinion - The Messenger

With the start of a new year, there is hope for change and resolutions. This time, we have another reason for hope, and it has to do with climate change.

For years, there were generally two competing ideas of how greenhouse gases would affect the climate, with very different trajectories, one very dire, the other less so.

In one scenario, we add CO2 to the atmosphere, and this starts to warm the planet’s surface. The CO2 stays in the atmosphere for a very long time, and the warming effect grows for decades or even longer, even if we stop adding greenhouse gases. Think of lighting a gas flame under a pot of water: It takes a long time for the water to boil.

In the other scenario, the warming catches up more quickly with the added CO2, so when we stop adding greenhouse gases, an equilibrium is reached very quickly.

Another aspect of this range of thought is how long the CO2 stays in the atmosphere. Some climate models have CO2 remaining in the atmosphere for centuries, while other climate models have the CO2 leaving the atmosphere (being absorbed by the ocean) more quickly.

Before saying anything more about these ideas, let me stress this point: We have already increased atmospheric greenhouse gasses to a dangerous level, we continue to make the situation worse — and unless we turn this situation around in the near future, things are going to get very bad.

Having said that, current thinking suggests that we can draw back from the most frightening scenario, which is that we have already destroyed the planet and that global collapse is in our future no matter what we do. The most up to date and accurate way of looking at global warming is this: When we stop polluting, we stop the warming.

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(I’m speaking generally here, but for more background on this and other related matters, I recommend climate scientist Michael Mann’s latest book, Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth's Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis.)

With this message of hope, I suggest a handful of climate change-related resolutions you might consider for the new year:

1) Stay hopeful

In the 1950s, a (rather cruel) experiment was done on rats in which researchers observed that rats rescued from a seemingly certain death moments before their demise demonstrated a stronger desire to live when later faced with a similar situation again — which researchers described as resilience and hope. Humans are not exactly hopeless rats forced to take part in a demented science experiment, but some would claim that we do exhibit the property of being more successful when we have hope, and not performing well when we have given up. Just keep repeating to yourself and others: “When we stop polluting, we stop the warming.”

2) Eschew incrementalism and stop admiring the problem

For decades, global warming was at once a serious threat to the planet, and it's also becoming a threat to reelection campaigns across the country as climate change becomes a top issue for many voters.

As a result of this and other factors, we often see conversations about solutions that promote half-measures, or that set up goals that are woefully incomplete. We must electrify everything and charge up on clean energy, stop burning fossil fuels and avoid burning most other stuff, protect carbon sinks like forests and wetlands and be very efficient in all of our energy uses. Half-measures merely stretch out the time before the system fails. Yes, we need to make these changes step-by-step because that is the nature of reality. But our aspirations should always be, from now on:

- A complete energy transition — not a partial one
- A total end to greenhouse gas emissions — not a percentage of that goal
- A comprehensive change in policy to define acts that promote global warming as always wrong — as though it were a crime

In conversations with your friends, family, and colleagues, and when you make that call to your elected representatives, when you hear incrementalist ideas, simply point out that we can’t do that anymore.

3) Kill the falsehoods

Years ago, I was considering buying a Toyota Hybrid (Prius) and was advised by an in-law not to. “The extra cost of that car will never be made up for in the gas savings, I read in a magazine, so don’t bother,” he said. So, to test that hypothesis, I contacted a car dealer and got the numbers.

“What kind of car would you get if you didn’t get the Prius,” the dealer asked.

“Well, I think a Subaru Forester, I like them,” I replied.

The dealer then told me that since the Forester cost, at the time, about $2,000 more than the Prius, that my savings with the Prius would begin on day one.

This was a typical example of the rhetorical falsehoods that swirl around the energy transition discussion, especially pertaining to electric vehicles, such as: an electric car is always a coal car (not true), a car battery is the worst example of exploiting slave labor (not true), since the Chinese will never lower emissions, nothing we can do will matter (not true), the technology is not ready (not true), and so on.

Follow this simple rule: When someone tells you that some aspect of the energy transition will actually make things worse, check your wallet to make sure it is still there, and then call a friend. You know who to call. People call me all the time. I call my friend Phil. Everybody knows someone who knows more than they do about the energy transition (and ideally knows enough to not push the falsehoods).

4) Fire up your activism, but not your stove

Get involved in making change. An expert on science and politics, Sean Otto, made the claim that the total number of contacts from Americans that a member of Congress, or a state house representative, receives before they consider an issue emerging from their electorate is about a dozen or fewer. This is probably because most people think that contacting an elected official has no effect. Given this widespread and incorrectly placed cynicism, you, dear reader, have extra power. Make the call, send the email, and if you are really up to it, write a letter to the editor of your local paper.

Meanwhile, when it is time for you to replace your leaking gas-powered water heater, or your beat-up old stove, make the replacement appliance an electric one, and not a gas one. The gas arrives at the stove as methane and, once burned, turns into CO2, which are both greenhouse gases we want to avoid. Urge your city to put solar panels on the new additions to the community. From personal behavior to policy you can push for necessary change to stop fossil fuel use.

5) Don’t rely on breakthroughs

Breakthrough technologies, those ideas that are not quite ready yet but that will supposedly solve everything sometime soon, may sound too good to be true — and they probably are. In some cases, they are poorly developed, unlikely to be scalable or even impossible ideas promulgated by climate change deniers that seem to offer a future solution, so it is OK to do nothing while we wait for it. This is not to say that there are no important technological breakthroughs now and then. But rely not on speculation, when we can embrace the actual solutions available to us now.

6) Vote

This should need no further explanation. Just as contacting existing lawmakers is critical, making your vote count for who is next in office is vital.

With these resolutions in mind, we can head into 2024 with renewed hope for what so often feels like a hopeless climate crisis.

Have a great carbon-reduced New Year!

Greg Laden, Ph.D., is a biological anthropologist and archaeologist who has conducted fieldwork in North America, the Congo and South Africa. He has taught at Harvard University, the University of Minnesota and Century College, among others. He writes Greg Laden’s Blog and is a freelance writer.

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