Take it or Leave it: FUTURE “FIRES”… A LONG HELD PERSONAL VIEW …by Jim Stiles

Acknowledging that we have committed to climate catastrophe is not paralysis. Life is still rich after you accept that it will end.

—– Tim De Christopher, April 27, 2018

Whether the recent Pack Creek fire outside Moab was the product of a warmer world, or of an over abundance of burnable understory from decades of forest mismanagement, or whether it was the sole responsibility of a few idiots who walked away from a smoldering campfire, I had to wonder if it really even mattered.

In 2021, I’m prone to embrace, if not enthusiastically, the more fatalistic view expressed by Tim De Christopher above. While this is far from a mainstream perspective, it’s my own belief that it is more important, even critical, to begin to deal with the impacts of an inevitably warmer world, rather than arrogantly assume we can alter the future via wind turbines, electric cars, and reusable grocery bags. 

If the planet is getting hotter, we need to be smarter. And more honest. And more sensitive. Instead, the exact opposite is happening. We humans continue to maintain dual and competing realities–realities that make us dense and delusional at best, and lying hypocrites if we’re really honest about it.  

On the one hand, I see hourly reminders of the apocalyptic future that so many predict for the planet as a consequence of climate change. Recent public opinion polls suggest that more and more of us have become “believers.”  To suggest that one is a climate change skeptic is almost as dangerous a proposition as proclaiming affection for Donald Trump. It is part of our lexicon now. I fully expect to see “Climate Change Mattress Sales”  in the very near future.

But in the real world, all our proclamations about being better stewards of the land border on the ridiculous. An embarrassing absurdity.  A recent report from the US Energy Information Administration offered some hard facts about our country’s alleged embrace of “renewable energy.” The numbers tell a story that few want to hear. For example, as a percentage of total US production, we still rely on petroleum, natural gas, coal and nuclear for 88% of our energy needs. A paltry 12% comes from “renewables.” And it gets worse.

Of the energy production designated “renewable,” over 60% comes from biomass and hydroelectric power. Even Bill McKibben has been forced to denounce biomass as an unacceptable alternative to fossil-fuels, and the environmental community has been opposing most hydroelectric projects for decades.

So, while 12% is designated as “renewable,” about 4% of the total energy can be attributed to wind and solar. When I see the thousands of towering 600 foot turbine towers being constructed across the country–even Monticello, Utah has 27 of them built on a ridge above the community–and I realize what an inconceivable number of them would be needed to even make a dent in our growing demand, it all seems so futile. 

During the recent heat wave in California, its governor urged the state’s 600,000 electric car owners to charge their vehicles only during off-peak hours. Those cars are less than 5% of the 15 million vehicles registered in the Golden State. But the state wants to eliminate sales of all fossil-fuel vehicles by 2035. How?

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In years and decades past, we worried about the toxic pollutants in the air and water. Many thought those chemicals would be the death of us all and and the ruination of our natural resources. Many scientists in the 1960s predicted an imminent planetary apocalypse. A half century later, those doomsday prophecies have failed to materialize. And thanks to the efforts of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of the early 1970s, many of the toxic pollutants that marred America’s skies and waterways have been dramatically reduced. Since 1970, while the population of the US has increased by 130 million, pollutants like carbon monoxide, lead, sulphur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide have declined, by an aggregate reduction of 70%. 

But the challenge of Climate Change has little to do with these kinds of pollutants. The threat comes from the increase in Carbon Dioxide, which in fact, isn’t even a  pollutant. But its increased concentration in our atmosphere is the concern that has preoccupied the world for the last decade. But it’s hardly a new subject. The NASA climate scientist James Hansen is often noted for raising the issue of Global Warming in 1988. Even earlier, in 1983, both the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)  addressed the issue of rising CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and the catastrophic consequences they might have, decades into the future.

The NAS report was titled “Haste of Global Warming Trend Opposed,” and was stunning for several reasons. Keep in mind, this was written 37 years ago.

Here are key points from a New York Times article on the report:

1.  A report issued today by the National Academy of Sciences says that the coming warming of the earth caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is ‘’cause for concern” but that there is sufficient time to prepare for its impact.

The academy’s report follows by three days a report by the Environmental Protection Agency on the warming phenomenon, known as the greenhouse effect.

2.  The academy’s report warns that the greenhouse effect will cause a rise in global temperature in the coming century that has ”few or no precedents in the earth’s recent history.”

3. Like the E.P.A. report,  the 496-page academy document warns that a rapid increase in the earth’s temperature and climate now seems inevitable and that its effects will begin to be felt by the turn of the century.

4.  ”Viewed in terms of energy, global pollution and worldwide environmental damage, the ‘CO2 problem’ appears intractable,” the report said.  Like the E.P.A., the academy also warned that the greenhouse effect was not likely to be prevented by reducing the use of coal and oil, the major sources of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  

5. Like the environmental agency, however, the academy found that since there is no politically or economically realistic way of heading off the greenhouse effect, strategies must be prepared to adapt to ”a high temperature world.” The E.P.A. report said even a total ban on coal would only delay the process for a few years.  

6.  ‘‘We may get in trouble in ways we have barely imagined, like release of methane from marine sediments,” as rising temperatures cause new effects, the report warned.

7.  On the other hand, it said, carbon dioxide by itself should have a beneficial effect on agriculture by improving the efficiency of photosynthesis, the process by which plants create carbohydrates and hydrogen to nourish themselves.

8.  It also said the benefits and damage stemming from climate change would fall ”unequally on the world’s people and nations” and could therefore be a new, divisive factor in world affairs

9.  ‘The foreseeable consequences of climate change are no cause for alarm on a global scale but could prove to be exceedingly bad news for particular parts of the world,” the report concluded. ‘‘Generally, the more well-to-do countries can take in stride what may prove to be a reduction by a few percent in living standards that will likely be greater per capita by more than 100 percent over today’s.”

10.  In the United States, the effect may be felt on agriculture starting around the year 2000, the report said. With warming of about 1 degree centigrade by then, the growing season in the northern part of the country would be about 10 days longer. In the southerly farm belt, where most of the country’s wheat, corn and soybeans are grown, drier conditions could decrease crop yields between 5 and 10 percent.

Click here to read the entire article.

As recently as 2007, a quarter century after these reports were released, much of the news and sentiment on global warming/climate change still followed similar lines of thinking. The Zephyr even featured a cover story called, “The Brighter Side of Global Warming,” albeit a tad tongue in cheek, but we quoted these very serious sources regarding ways to deal with the changing climate:

NEWSWEEK magazine observed recently that, “with further warming seemingly inevitable, the farsighted are already thinking beyond combating climate change. By government fiat or market force, humans will adapt, and that will bring opportunities as well as challenges.” 

It notes that, with rising temperatures, “Russia, long a half-frozen terra incognita, will find its interior frontiers thrown wide open as the Siberian tundra turns to fertile prairie.” Of course, the lower latitudes of the planet will be scorched, “but America and other rich nations will be left relatively unscathed, because they are removed from equatorial regions that will be hardest hit, and wealthy enough to adapt.”

According to NEWSWEEK, even parts of last year’s otherwise chilling report on global warming shined some happy light on the issue. British economist Nicholas Stern reported, “In higher latitude regions, such as Canada, Russia and Scandinavia, climate change may lead to net benefits through higher agricultural yields, lower winter mortality, lower heating costs and a possible boost in tourism.”

And according to Alaska Business Magazine, “…increasingly, Alaska may find potential trade and economic benefits from global climate change. According to Mead Treadwell of the Northern Forum, sea routes across the top of Russia will soon become practical alternatives to shipping freight from the Pacific Rim to Europe…In addition, receding sea ice is slowly showing hints of a long-sought-for Northwest Passage, through the archipelago of Canada’s far north. Alaska stands at the crossroad of these new trade routes.” Treadwell cautiously added, “However before cruise ships or freighters ply these routes regularly, strong political obstacles must be overcome.“

BACK TO 2021

The current global movement on climate change–which emphasizes that our only hope to save the planet is to reverse the increasing levels of CO2–is a recent phenomenon. Before this, the response was typically one of accepting and dealing with a warmer world. It’s just that most of us can’t remember further back in time than five years.  While our current climate angst seems to have had us by the throats forever, the facts just don’t bear it out. 

One thing is certain. While I harbor no deep affection for the oil companies that drill the wells and find the oil and refine it into gasoline so I can drive my car, I have a difficult time blaming them for all our woes. Recent lawsuits have tried to suggest that Big Oil knew about all these Climate risks, hid them from us, and kept feeding us oil anyway. And that as a result, they should be punished. The truth is, we ALL knew it. We were provided with the information, and we weighed those facts against the lifestyle we have chosen to lead. Five administrations, both Democratic and Republican, heard the same news. Exxon didn’t put a gun to my head every time I filled my tank. We all knew exactly what we were doing.

So here we are, racing rapidly into the second half of 2021.  All anyone has to do is to look around, as we emerge from a year in hiding from COVID-19, and observe our own behavior. We act like caged animals who just broke out of the zoo— we flood the shops and stores and national parks, we spend billions of dollars on ‘stuff’ we don’t need,  and we purchase new cars and bigger homes and faster, wilder vacations. We go crazy on Amazon. Our collective behavior is just slightly more insane than it was in 2019, the year before the pandemic. But the trend is clear. In short, we act in ways that will predictably assure the destruction of the most precious commodity we claim to love.  Our planet. And this is happening now, not decades into the future when the full effects of climate change are supposed to strike us the hardest.  

I think Wendell Berry said it best, years ago…:

“…this is what is wrong with the conservation movement. It has a clear conscience….To the conservation movement, it is only production that causes environmental degradation; the consumption that supports the production is rarely acknowledged to be at fault. The ideal of the run-of-the-mill conservationist is to impose restraints upon production without limiting consumption or burdening the consciences of consumers.”

While every good progressive environmentalist, worth his or her ever expanding carbon footprint, sheds tears and wrings hands over the coming global warming apocalypse, there is every reason to believe that other earthly degradations, at the hands of us humans, will beat climate change to the finish line long before rising sea levels and temperatures make life unbearable and unlivable. We’re doing such an excellent job of degrading the planet, we didn’t need Climate Change to help us along.

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Twenty years ago, long before climate change became the blame for all our woes, I watched a BBC special called “State of the Planet.” It was written and produced by the naturalist David Attenborough. In the three part series, he warned of  the approaching  “Sixth Extinction.”  Attenborough noted that human activity was triggering a mass extinction “on a scale similar to that which killed the dinosaurs.” He made a compelling case and laid out, in his view, the five contributing human factors causing it. 

Attenborough talked about habitat loss (via mass agriculture, mining and urban sprawl), introduced species, pollution ( in the form of contaminants, not CO2), over harvesting (depleting the oceans of its fish stocks for example), and islandization (the isolation of species as a consequence of over-development). 

He never mentioned the increase in CO2 world-wide as a cause of the forthcoming Sixth Extinction. Not once. To Attenborough, there were already enough reasons to be concerned. “State of the Planet” never aired in the United States and even now can be found only on DVDs that play in Europe. A bootleg copy was recently removed from YouTube by BBC.

But watching the series two decades ago was seminal for me. For the first time, I understood that the real message of extinction wasn’t really about cataclysmic events, but about a slow but steady decline in the planet’s diversity. I refer here not just to biological diversity, but to the dwindling diversity of human thought as well. To the death of critical thinking. To the end of personal responsibility. To the dumbing down of our human civilization. 

Because the film can’t be accessed, I’m working from memory, but I believe it was the biologist E.O Wilson who described a future in which the planet was occupied by four kinds of trees, three kinds of birds, and dogs and cats. He noted that if that’s a world you can live in, then “biologic impoverishment” is just for you.

But would anyone notice? In the future a hundred years ahead, would anyone care? Who reading this story still mourns the passenger pigeon? Or the moa? Or the dodo bird? They all went extinct in the last few hundred years. Had we finished off the last 200 buffalo in the 1890s, who would still grieve? Or would we put the once mighty beast on a postage stamp, dedicate a day of the year to its demise and go about our daily routine? 

A recent Atlantic magazine article called “Why Americans Might Never Notice Climate Change’s Hotter Weather,”  reports the findings of a study by the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”  Its conclusion…

“Americans’ sense of “normal” weather seems to reset about every five years, they found. People sent more weather tweets when it was unusually hot or cold outside, but their sense of what made for “unusual” weather was fairly shortsighted. Generally, if people had experienced an extreme temperature in the same month over the previous two to eight years, they were much less likely to tweet about it. 

“This is a challenging finding for many climate advocates, because it suggests that people update their sense of normal weather faster than climate change will occur. In other words, many Americans will simply never detect that anything has gone wrong with the weather, at least on a day-to-day basis.”   

I found an interesting climate change-related map not long ago. Pick a city from across America–what will that location’s climate be like in 60 years under a worst case “high emissions” scenario? The map will tell you. For example, if you live in Wichita, Kansas, 60 years from now, and if high emissions continue, its climate will feel like today’s climate in Lawton, Oklahoma.  Salt Lake City’s climate in 2080 will feel like Red Bluff, California in 2019. Reno, Nevada will feel like Hurricane, Utah. Denver, like Borger, Texas. Farmington, New Mexico, like St. George, Utah in six decades. And again, under a high emissions scenario.

But again…who’s going to notice? Forests will burn, mostly due to our own stupidity. The changes that await future generations will be met with the same indifference that so many of our fellow humans view the planet now. If a century from now, the only trees that can survive on the La Sal Mountains are Black Locusts and Chinese Elms, who will remember the difference?

For some reason, I can’t get R.E.M’s apocalyptic tune, “It’s the end of the world…as we know it.” out of my head. It plays over and over.  And for sure, the song will be repeated again and again, by each succeeding generation, as the world they knew vanishes before their eyes, and a new one takes its place. 

And their sad lament will be just as ‘right’ as ours.

POSTSCRIPT: Just last week, another article appeared on my screen that gave even more credence to my assumptions. The headline, from LiveScience.com read:

“Society is right on track for a global collapse, new study of infamous 1970s report finds”

From the article:

“…a team of MIT scientists argued that industrial civilization was bound to collapse if corporations and governments continued to pursue continuous economic growth, no matter the costs. The researchers forecasted 12 possible scenarios for the future, most of which predicted a point where natural resources would become so scarce that further economic growth would become impossible, and personal welfare would plummet.”

The prediction from half a century ago was that we were already on our way to hard times, without the diversion of global warming, which has now bewilderingly placed all these other issues in a very deep hole. 

Jim Stiles is Founding Publisher and Senior Editor of the Canyon Country Zephyr.

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