Climate Connection: Upcoming Earth Week
Earth Day is next Tuesday, April 22. It was established in 1970 and led to creation of the Environmental Protection Agency by a Republican president.
This is a grave time for the planet with indices contributing to global warming continuing to increase: CO2, nitrous oxide, methane, tropical forest loss, and fossil fuel use. As a result, indices of effect are increasing: surface temperature, ocean acidification, coastal nitrogen, biosphere degradation, species extinctions, and severe weather. We have exceeded 6 of 9 planetary boundaries and are now recognizing human chronic disease effects of one of them — novel entities such as microplastics.
The federal administration has diminished our governmental research capability for climate science, public health, medicine, oceanography, weather, and agriculture. Our science infrastructure in major research universities is being destroyed by freezing of grants and capping of overhead rates. Without pursuit of science, we are less able to adapt to conditions that human beings have never experienced in the past. Denial of what scientists have been telling decision makers since the 1950s about the consequences of burning fossil fuels cannot result in rational policy that protects the earth and us.
Some financial leaders in insurance are recognizing that we are in a new precarious era of unprecedented environmental conditions. Meanwhile, the major banks have withdrawn from international agreements to support climate-protective investments. They continue to support more lucrative fossil fuel investments. They have determined that the temperature goals of keeping global warming to 1.5 or 2.0 degrees C are dead because of the governmental setbacks to decarbonization.
As climate-related extreme weather threatens all assets, those assets become uninsurable. At 2 degrees C, two estimates of the number of U.S. communities that will be spared are 14 and 25%. At 3 degrees, it is unclear if any community will be safe, and relative safety will be the world’s most valuable asset. Without insurance, all financial services fail, and capitalism is no longer viable. This is one aspect of what is meant by collapse of civilization. Devaluation of what has been valuable in the past is beginning (e.g., coastal property). The capacity of communities, states, and countries to repair damages from floods, fires, and drought may be overwhelmed. In the U.S., the crippling of the Federal Emergency Management Agency contributes to our vulnerability.
The economic chaos unleashed by recent tariff decisions and reversals may open eyes to previously unquestioned assumptions about the stability of our social world. Perhaps realization of the magnitude of changes in both environmental and political worlds will shake citizens from the inertia that prevents us from participating in creation of a world that serves all of us —within the physical boundaries of our planet and the best attributes of human nature.
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Kay Kreiss, Transition Sitka