We do know how to respond to a crisis

I decided I should take the time now to listen to that Greta Thunberg podcast from 11 months ago I mentioned yesterday. So here are my notes as I listened. It is 75 minutes and audio only. She spoke before the United Nations during General Assembly week, which the Secretary General had designated would be all about the climate. She made a big deal of getting from Stockholm to New York by an ecologically friendly ship rather than a highly polluting airplane. She saw her image everywhere. If one cared about that attention one could develop a personality far from sane. She was annoyed with the queue of people who came to her to congratulate her, then take a selfie with her to post on social media with the hashtag #Savetheplanet. Which does nothing to save the planet. A lot of world leaders were there. But speakers were only those who have shown they have solutions. She gave her “How Dare You” speech that became famous. I wrote about it in September 2019. The first stop on the trip was Washington. The big question was who is the adult in the room. She was appalled in the House food court, where junk food is sold and eaten. She asked politicians to act while there is still time. They responded with amazement that she is an activist while so young. They tell her she too can be a politician and make a difference in the world when she grows up. She replied that by the time she finishes her schooling it will be too late. She talked data. They changed the subject. Greta came to the meeting in Pelosi’s office with perhaps 20 other youth, many from indigenous peoples in North and South America. It seemed like two different worlds separated by centuries of racism, oppression, and genocide. A Lakota youth objected to the portrait of Abraham Lincoln, who was responsible for the deaths of many Lakota people. How can there be climate justice when racial injustices around the world are not acknowledged? She spoke to Congress, but that was also awkward. They wanted to hear from her, not the scientists she wanted them to listen to. So she printed a copy of the IPCC report and submitted that as her testimony. Her message is listen to the science and scientists. Which scientists? There are always those who say not enough evidence. But not in the IPCC report, that consensus is overwhelming. In the 2018 IPCC report, the foundation of the Paris climate agreement, if we are to avoid tipping point processes we must keep the global temperature rise below 1.5C. It’s already at 1.2C. A release of 300 gigatons of carbon dioxide will put us above a rise of 1.5C. We currently emit 40 gigatons a year. That means we have only seven years – and that was three years ago. The report included the assumption that there will be massive processes to remove CO2 from the atmosphere – which don’t exist yet. We need to make changes unprecedented in human history. One problem in doing so is there is no absolute deadline date and no estimate of the human cost. There are results of lots of scary models, but none of them take in the whole picture. Even so, the IPCC report is the only reliable roadmap available. Relying on children to get the word out is an epic failure. After New York she and her father traveled around America and Canada for five weeks in a borrowed electric car. They saw a lot – New England, Vancouver, Alabama, Los Angeles. They saw 37 states. And lots of shopping malls. Sometimes there were media crews with them. Every Friday, wherever she was, she held a climate strike. The largest was Montreal – a half million people. She is outraged by the economic inequality and the racism. She saw billboards with anti science campaigns. She saw quite a few oil refineries, but not may wind turbines and solar panels, no serious transition to sustainable energy. America seems to be quite a ways behind Europe. We don’t even have public health care. They went to the Alberta Tar Sands, where the owners consider her a threat. She asked for police protection. She visited Jasper National Park and saw trees dying. The ranger said about 50% of trees were affected. The problem is a pine beetle. Up to a couple decades ago the beetle wasn’t a problem because the winter cold killed most of them off. But now the winters don’t get cold enough and too many of the beetles survive. This is an example of a tipping point. They visited the Athabasca Glacier. With a glacier specialist they walk up to the glacier. Along the way there are signs, each with a year. That was how far the glacier extended that year. At the 1982 sign there is no visible glacier. It has retreated about a mile in the last 120 years and retreats about 16 feet a year. The glacier ice has soot in it from the wildfires burning trees killed by the beetles. Soot absorbs light, causing the glacier to melt even faster. This glacier will be gone completely within this century. Communities depend on glaciers for water and have adjusted their use according to the increased melt flow. When the glaciers are gone the water stops. Two billion people in Asia depend on the water from the Himalaya glaciers. The warming calculated from CO2 in the air doesn’t include the warming caused by air pollution. They visited the town of Paradise, California, which had been destroyed by a wildfire in 2018. The wildfire season is now nearly continuous. The climate crisis is affecting people now, in spite of what some people are claiming. Others say we need to act for the sake of our children. But we need to act for us, now. People are dying today. The people hit hardest will be those already vulnerable – the poor, especially in developing countries, and women and children. There will be one billion climate refugees. What will it take for some people to pay attention? In Sweden the country releases 11 tons of CO2 per person a year. That is compared to 1.7 tons in India or 0.3 tons in Kenya. Too many in the developed world live an unsustainable life and believe that is our right. The crisis won’t be fair. Those harmed the most will have caused the least damage. An interviewer in Stockholm had asked her how to “solve” the climate crisis. First, asking her, a teenager, for the solution is absurd. Second, one doesn’t “solve” a climate crisis any more than one “solves” a war. What we do in a crisis is come together, gather the experts, put other things aside, and adapt to the new reality as quickly and strongly as possible. One finds solutions along the way. People aren’t treating the climate as a crisis because they aren’t aware. Even many people who could do something get important facts wrong and lack basic knowledge. So who isn’t doing the messaging? Thunberg said she isn’t doing this for fame or media clicks. She’s doing it because no one else is. What should we do to avoid a climate disaster? A better question: What should we stop doing to avoid a disaster? We can’t reach the Paris Agreement goals by reducing carbon emissions. We must stop emissions, then soon go into negative emissions. Ways to reduce emissions include: (1) Replace carbon energy with renewables. (2) Capture CO2 out of the air with technology – but that needs to start happening now and technology isn’t ready. (3) Use nature’s way to pull CO2 out of the air. Better than planting trees is to leave the jungles and forests alone – we lose a football field of forest every second and we can’t plant trees that fast. (4) Stop doing harmful things. If we can’t buy, build, or invest our way to a solution we have a mental block. Or we could lie about the problem and blame someone else. That includes such things as stop counting sources of emissions. Every rich country does this. Moving jobs overseas also moves emissions overseas. People in power can say what they want and aren’t challenged. There’s a lot of hype of green investments. But what does “green” and similar terms mean? They’ve been watered down enough to lose meaning. No one is held accountable. Since the truth is unpopular and unprofitable it doesn’t have a chance. So many emperors are naked it’s one big nudist party. The coronavirus pandemic went through a tipping point – things that were unthinkable were suddenly the way they needed to be done. She canceled her climate strikes. The world adapted to the crisis at record speed. International meetings. Economic bailouts. Lockdowns to change behavior. News media set other issues aside. Politicians put differences aside and cooperate for the greater good (yeah, I know the GOP didn’t). Leaders say we must listen to the scientists. Everyone said we can’t put a price on human life. So, yeah, we do know how to respond to a crisis. Yet, every year 7 million people die from air pollution. And here we did put a price on human life. The scientists also say if we don’t protect the environment more and deadlier viruses are coming. Long term sustainability doesn’t fit within today’s political and economic systems. As we emerge from the pandemic there is more talk of a green recovery plan. But this isn’t close to what is required and the targets won’t be ambitious enough. It seems most world leaders have given up without really trying. Even if they wanted to we’re stuck in existing contracts – such as for fossil fuels. We’ll have to tear up contracts on a massive scale. But that’s not economically or legally possible. What we need doesn’t fit within today’s political and economic systems. News editors and politicians may choose to look away. But today’s youth, who will live with this, can’t. Countries need to reduce their emissions by 12-15% a year, starting now. But there really isn’t a way to do that. We can’t solve the crisis without treating it like a crisis. There is hope. It comes of from the people. We can drive though, though the level of knowledge is too low. Society has reached a tipping point in equality, justice, and sustainability. We – Thunberg and you and me – now need to do the seeming impossible. No one will do it for us.