The Virus and the Climate Solution
March, 2020
While our immediate problem no.1 – the viral pandemic – deserves our full attention, it is vital to understand how this problem is intimately connected to our long-term problem no.1, which has not gone away – the warming climate.Abstract:
Our response to the ongoing viral pandemic has been to slow our economies. That's a good start on what we need to do to solve our larger problem – the warming of the Earth.
The virus has brought national economies around the world to a near-standstill. This may not continue for long, but for its duration the air in Beijing is relatively clean. More importantly, China's (and by now, every country's) discharges of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere have been dramatically reduced, and this – unfortunate as it has been for many people – will have a salutary effect on our battle against climate change.
But that effect will be minor and temporary unless we act to benefit from our medical misfortune. Most political leaders realize that the problem of global heating has become a crisis. But most of them look only to a single solution to this problem: new technology. They also promise good economic times ahead, with continued growth.
Both of those visions are dead wrong, and will take us to failure in our battle against global warming. There are two necessary parts to solving the climate problem, if it can be solved. Technology is one part, but will not by itself succeed in halting or reversing the warming. We have missed the deadline for that; the problem is too far gone, and if we wait for technological solutions alone we will likely be lost as a civilization, and perhaps as a species.
The second part of the solution, the inconvenient part ignored by most politicians, is this: Since we know that the generation of energy, production of goods, and transport of both goods and people, are the chief causes of excess heat-trapping gas discharges, we must reduce these elements if we are to succeed in halting the warming of the Earth. Far from expanding our economies, we need to contract, and a world-wide economic slow-down (yes, a recession, but a managed recession) is probably our only reasonable hope for avoiding climate catastrophe.1
If this is our only way forward, as it seems to be, we are facing the most monstrous political challenge mankind has ever faced. Convincing every country to take measures to turn their national goal of economic growth on its head, to in fact bring on recession – even though necessary to save civilization – sounds unachievable. But there may be ways to approach this that can make progress. Above all, this reduction in economic activity must be agreed to by the major economies, and then the slow-down that will follow must be managed in the sense that economic support must be offered both by the individual governments and by the world-wide consortium of nations, likely through the World Bank.
UN Secretary-General Guterres must take the lead, and he should convene a special UN session (not another largely useless climate conference) for the purposes of 1. to declare a world-wide climate emergency, and 2. to work out a program that quickly and significantly reduces "greenhouse gas" emissions in the three key areas of energy generation, production of goods, and transportation. This highly focused session needs to be based on the conclusive determination – faced as we are with overwhelming evidence of imminent tragedy – that we have no more time to dither; the time is now to cooperatively solve our common problem. The current pandemic has led to a certain amount of extraordinary international cooperation in medical research, assistance, and even in talk of peace. It is the right time to seize the spirit of cooperation and make the critical move forward on the climate crisis.
In addition to the UN providing organizational leadership, the world at this point literally needs a "savior", a moral leader who will step up, be recognized, and convince the people of the world of the truth of our dire situation. This motivator may be a major politician, but this is not necessary. It appears that our politicians do not have a taste for the difficult decisions that must be made, since these are rarely in the politicians' own immediate interest; thus it is likely that our needed motivator will arise from the people. But it seems likely that without the people being convinced of their critical situation, the politicians will not act.
Implementing the solution of slowing down cannot be one-size-fits-all: countries that release most greenhouse gases (per capita) need to do most to reduce them. And all countries need to step up to assist one another where needed. Without good will and a cooperative spirit we will fail. It seems obvious that to reduce emissions from the energy, manufacture, and transport industries we first identify waste in these processes in order to eliminate it, and we next identify trivial or unnecessary uses that we can do without. Eliminating all these may be sufficient to meet our goal. It will at least make a dent, something we have not been successful in doing up to now.
We will find that there are great amounts of waste in the use of energy, and these need to be tackled in a much more aggressive way than heretofore. Both individual and corporate users of energy must be taught that their use adds CO2 directly to the atmosphere, and they must be held responsible for only using the electrical or fuel energy actually required. Next in the energy sector, a large part of our energy use is strictly speaking unnecessary. We need to identify these and eliminate them to the degree that we can. We burn a lot of energy on having fun. As important it is to have fun, we can have it without destroying our environment. We need to learn to entertain ourselves and each other without excessive energy use. Gaudy entertainments mounted with huge uses of energy need to be a thing of the past. At the same time, military movements and construction need to be halted around the world. The world's military forces use vast amounts of energy to little useful purpose. Agreements must be reached quickly for forces to stay at home, in port, and on the ground.
In production of goods, we need to cut out luxuries and unneeded goods; we need to buy less. We must adopt a frugal lifestyle where we buy what we need and we use it as long as it lasts. We must ignore the advertisers' calls to buy new car models and new fashions, and we must be mindful of the production of waste and of the energy and environmental effects of our actions.
Similarly with transport of goods and people: A practice that needs to stop immediately is traveling just for fun, such as taking a cruise or flying to distant vacation or tourism spots. Buying goods that are made half-way around the world must be minimized. In short, we must buy less, waste less, buy local, and reduce travel and transport to a minimum.
Living frugally would have no serious negative impact on those who practice that by avoiding excess purchases, but it would have major economic impacts on the service or production end. And here's the rub: politicians must devise both national and international systems of support for those – often whole communities or nations – who are negatively impacted by the new frugality. We need, in effect, a Marshall Plan for the world.2
Can this happen? Can the world's political leaders quickly create a sensible and fair world-wide system that provides for necessities, produces and sells goods locally, where we reduce our consumption, avoid waste, and support one another across national borders? Will the threat of destruction of human civilization be sufficient to motivate our leaders to cooperate, even to help one another unselfishly? Most of us will doubt that. There is little evidence from the past that wisdom and unselfish concern for our collective well-being will suddenly inspire the world's political class. But if it doesn't, may Heaven help us. Unfortunately, there's equally little evidence that help will come from that quarter.
Notes:
1. I leave out of this discussion the "elephant in the room", which is the excessive and still-fast-growing human population. Since our total greenhouse gas emissions equal the per capita emissions multiplied by the number of people, population is the single greatest variable in the emissions equation. A program to stop our numerical growth and begin a population reduction by reducing births is essential to both solving the climate problem and for successful continuation of human civilization in balance with our natural environment. While I pass over it in this note, the managers of our adaptation to the planet must address this problem head-on, and must succeed in commencing a slow reduction of our numbers. Given the juvenile nationalistic and racial antipathies that have characterized our species throughout historic times, it is self-evident that an integration of humanity into a unified whole must be undertaken in order to succeed in this endeavor. The alternative will be terminal chaos, a true Armageddon.
2. I recognize the embarrassing irony of referring to this American plan of assistance for post-WWII Europe, while today's USA (where this site originates) is "led" by a president effectively in absentia, a man who will not lift a finger to save our environment, and whose only thought is for financial profit. But at this writing the destructive Mr. Trump has less than ten months left in the job, and will be replaced by (apparently) Mr. Biden, who seems committed to do what is necessary to reverse both the climate problem and other environmental degradations. After four years of dimmed hopes, the US may again take a leading role in attempting to save our civilization from our own depredations.
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