Warmer and drier
California wildfires have burned into at least four groves of gigantic ancient sequoias in national parks and forests, though cooler weather on Friday helped crews trying to keep the flames away from a famous cluster containing the world’s largest tree.
The fires lapped into the groves with trees that can be up to 200 feet (61 meters) tall and 2,000 years old, including Oriole Lake Grove in Sequoia National Park and Peyrone North and South groves in the neighboring Sequoia National Forest.
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Flames were still about a mile (1.5 kilometers) from the famed Giant Forest, where some 2,000 massive sequoias grow on a plateau high in the mountains of the national park.
Firefighters have placed special aluminum wrapping around the base of the General Sherman Tree, the world’s largest by volume at 52,508 cubic feet (1,487 cubic meters), as well as some other sequoias and buildings.
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A historic drought tied to climate change is making wildfires harder to fight. Scientists say climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.
Meanwhile the cruise ships trundle in and out of Puget Sound, each burning its 80 thousand gallons of fuel per day.
In the meantime, none of the signers of the Paris Accords have made any reasonable effort to achieve the goals contained therein. “Too expensive,” “Too disruptive to the economy” “Too too.”
Floods, storms, wildfires, water shortages, migrating invasive species of bugs that eat trees and crops, also happen to be expensive and destructive to economies.
A terrible tragedy is befalling the world, and we’re too incapable, as individuals, of doing anything to avert it, or even to mitigate the worst of the effects. I just don’t know what the answer is. I don’t think anyone does. Oh, lots of people know what we ought to be doing; but it seems that no-one knows how to rally thousands of millions of people to protect themselves, the planet, and their children’s futures.
Each of us is born, enmeshed in a world fully equipped with structures and insitutions over which we have no say. Human civilization is a vast, haphazard, tottering, superstructure built on a foundation of biological and material cycles and systems which we are actively undermining. We have reified, and deified arbitrary constructs like money, placing more importance on them than the fundamental needs of life upon which we all depend. We have been seduced by the power of our own creations, ascribing to them a power, permanence and inevitability they could never have. There is nothing intrinsic in a red traffic light that makes us stop: there is no physical power in the particular wavelength of light that makes wheels cease to turn. It’s a useful, agreed-upon social convention.
Money is the same, yet we treat it as something more real and necessary than clean water and breathable air. We could survive without it. It would become complicated to do so, given how deeply we have woven it into our lives, but all the other millions of species on Earth do just fine without it.
Too many of us are overawed by massive wealth and the power we accord it. Our primate instincts for hierarchy and strategic alliance-building has been hijacked by one of our own creations, distorting our relationships with each other and the rest of the living world. We have so compartmentalized ourselves that we can continue to burn the very world upon which we all depend. We’ve barely begun to learn about the intricate web of connection that bind us to the world, yet feel ignorantly confident to blunder through them in the pursuit of profit. We might just be learning, but we know enough to realize that the path we’re on will not lead to anywherewe want to end up. As Ophelia has pointed out, democratic political systems are poorly equipped to break harsh truths to their electorates, and tyrannies are more interested in the machinery of power itself, than in planetary survival.
How do we extricate ourselves from the corner into which we’ve so cleverly painted ourselves? We can’t continue for long with business as usual. How do we dismantle the institutions and vested interests that stand in the way of finding a safer, saner path before it’s too late? How do we do this in an equitable way, without the violence and destruction that so often accompany revolutions. And it is a revolution that is needed, greater in size and extent than any in human history. If we do not attempt to initiate and guide this change ourselves, it will be forced upon us in unimaginably swift and brutal ways, once too many tipping points are triggered.
It seems an overwhelming task, and certainly for individuals, it is. There’s only so much that one can do. Without co-operation, without compassion, without solidarity, we are lost. Can we act collectively to do what must be done to lessen the disaster facing us? It will be difficult and painful, but it’s not as if our current arrangements work for everyone, nor are they free of violence and injustice.It’s simply that much of the violence and injustice has been outsourced and exported, kept out of sight and out of scrutiny. The places where wealth and privilege can offer some shield against the consequences of our actions are shrinking.
It’s clear from events in North America and Europe this year that in coming years we will suffer from current climate changes and have to adapt to it.
Matt Hagens (Emeritus Goldman Sachs) and William Rees (Emeritus UBC) have presented good analyses.
Nate Hagens Jul 1, 2019 The Human Predicament https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNzLkdr7UIU, (Take a look at the three best all time inventions 46:35 – 47:20)
Nate Hagens Apr 26, 2020 The State of The Species 2020 https://youtu.be/cQOnfPBSd8g (Murphy and Frank at 1:00:50 – 1:01:20)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oVTHKzC7TM 1:14:14 Keynote Lecture: William E. Rees – Climate change isn’t the problem, so what is? Jan 28, 2021
Friederike Otto and colleagues at the Environmental Change Institute, Oxford can estimate the odds that events (heat domes, firestorms, drought …) are caused by current climate changes.
How to respond?
Hope Jahren {“Lab Girl”), for example, does mention some individual actions (“The Story of More”, p. 177, “The Action You Take”). Nonetheless, an upcoming IPCC report, from Working Group III of the IPCC—due out in March 2022 says very clearly that individual and voluntary change will not be enough to save us:
“Individuals can contribute to overcoming barriers and enable climate change mitigation. Individual behavioural change in isolation cannot reduce GHG emissions significantly.”
The second key statement from the report:
“If 10-30% of the population were to demonstrate commitment to low-carbon technologies, behaviours, and lifestyles, new social norms would be established.”
(Sami Grover “Leaked IPCC Report: Behavior Change Does (And Does Not) Matter”, Treehugger, September 3, 2021}
Action can’t wait for the ‘overthrow of the system’.
Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England and Bank of Canada, says “The Dasgupta Review makes a core point that we must view ourselves as part of nature, not separate from it, and that we have been depleting our natural capital. … … COP26 in November looks to accelerate engineering, political and finance together and establish reporting requirements so that every bank, pension fund, insurance company and investor can make judgements about where companies are being managed in a way to get to net zero.” (interview by Richard Webb, New Scientist, Mar, 20, 2021, p.44) To work within the financial system Mark Carney and Micael Bloomberg set up TCFD the – Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures as the standard template for the Investors Group on Climate Change and investors in general to require all companies to set a climate transition plan and allow them to vote on it. Corporations will respond to investors.
A constitutional court case in Germany, launched by young environmentalists who argued that a failure to deal with the climate crisis quickly would jeopardize their freedom by pushing cleanup into the next generation, ruling in late April declared Germany’s emission reduction targets lacking in ambition.
It’s two steps forward, one step back.
An analysis of plans to boost post-pandemic economic recovery found 64 examples of environmental rollbacks, such as allowing drilling in protected areas.
(New Scientist, Mar. 20, 2021, p. 21, The International Journal of Protected Areas and Conservation, doi.org/fz5v)
Europe’s diversification hid deep flaws: not enough cheap power to meet periods of peak demand e.g. air conditioners to beat the heat and economies roaring back after the pandemic. The wind not blowing when it was supposed to was certainly a big part of the problem. Getting rid of coal and nukes while gambling that the wind will always blow and the sun will always shine showed remarkably poor judgement. (Eric Reguly, “Europe’s power crisis is a pricey reminder of the limits of renewable energy”, The Globe and Mail, Sept. 18, 2021, B1)
Last month U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, issued a bizzaro statement calling on OPEC and Russia (OPEC+, Organization of Petroleum Exporting countries, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela and 10 other less-than-democratic countries with Vladmir Putin’s Russia serving as informal member) to increase oil production amid worries about the impact of climbing gasoline prices on Democratic political fortunes, pleading with thugs who care not a whit about the environment or human rights. … Global oil demand is on track to exceed 101 million barrels a day by next year and OPEC reckons that the goal of alleviating “energy poverty” in the developing world will along require hefty production increases in the years to come. … The completion this year of Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline expansion (TMX) by the end of 2022 will increase export capacity by almost a million barrels a day and higher oil prices will encourage Alberta producers to fill it.
(Konrad Yakabuski, “Our phony election debate over the oil sands won’t stop their growth”, The Globe and Mail, Sept. 11, 2021 O11)
There is some progress, but it’s uphill.
I’m increasingly convinced that one of the great powers will do the math on population reduction and figure out the most efficient way to commit the required atrocity without otherwise changing how they live.