getting the planet back on track be difficult? Yes, of course. But is it an impossible task? No.
Cars, air travel, space exploration, television, nuclear power, high-speed computers, telephones, organ transplants, prosthetic body parts . . . At various times these were all deemed impossible. I’ve been around long enough to have witnessed many technological feats that were once unimaginable. Even ten or twenty years ago, I would never have guessed people would carry supercomputers in their pockets—your smart-phone is more powerful than all the computers NASA used to put astronauts on the moon in 1969 combined!
Despite a long history of the impossible becoming possible, often very quickly, the “can’t be done” refrain is repeated over and over regarding global warming. Climate change deniers and fossil fuel industry apologists often argue that replacing oil, coal, and gas with clean energy is beyond our reach. The claim is both facile and false. Facile because the issue is complicated. It’s not simply a matter of substituting one for the other. To begin, conservation and efficiency are key. We must find ways to reduce the amount of energy we use—not a huge challenge considering how much people waste, especially in the developed world. False because rapid advances in clean energy and grid technologies continue to get us closer to necessary reductions in our use of polluting fossil fuels.
It’s ironic that anti-environmentalists and renewable energy opponents often accuse those of us seeking solutions of wanting to go back to the past, to living in caves, scrounging for roots and berries. They’re the ones intent on continuing to burn stuff to keep warm—to the detriment of the natural world and all it provides. People have used basic forms of wind, hydro, and solar power for millennia. But recent rapid advances in generation, storage, and transmission technologies have led to a fast-developing industry that’s outpacing fossil fuels in growth and job creation. Costs are coming down to the point where renewable energy is competitive with the heavily subsidized fossil fuel industry. According to the International Energy Agency, renewable energy for worldwide electricity generation grew from 13.2 percent in 2012 to 22 percent in 2013, with the share expected to increase to at least 26 percent by 2020.1
The problem is that much of the world still burns nonrenewable resources for electricity and fuels, causing pollution and climate change and, subsequently, more human health problems, extreme weather events, water shortages, and environmental devastation. In many cities in China, the air has become almost unbreathable. In California, a prolonged drought is affecting food production. Extreme weather events are costing billions of dollars worldwide.
We simply must do more to shift away from fossil fuels, and despite what the naysayers claim, we can. We can even get partway there under our current systems. Market forces often lead to innovation in clean energy development. But in addressing the very serious long-term problems we’ve created, we may have to challenge another “impossibility”: changing our outmoded global economic system. As economist and Earth Institute director Jeffrey Sachs wrote in the Guardian in 2015, “At this advanced stage of environmental threats to the planet, and in an era of unprecedented inequality of income and power, it’s no longer good enough to chase GDP. We need to keep our eye on three goals—prosperity, inclusion, and sustainability—not just on the money.”2
Relying on free-market capitalism encourages hyper-consumption, planned obsolescence, wasteful production, and endless growth. Cutting pollution and greenhouse gas emissions requires conserving energy as well as developing new energy technologies. Along with reducing reliance on private automobiles and making buildings and homes more energy efficient, that also means making goods that last longer and producing fewer disposable or useless items so that less energy is consumed in production. And it means looking at agricultural practices and dietary habits, because industrial agriculture, especially meat production, is a major factor in global warming.
People have changed economic systems many times when they no longer suited shifting conditions or when they were found to be inhumane, as with slavery. And people continue to develop tools and technologies that were once thought impossible. Things are only impossible until they’re not. We can’t let those who are stuck in the past, unable to imagine a better future, hold us back from creating a safer, cleaner, and more just world.
This book can’t provide all the answers, but it’s an attempt to look at global warming from all angles: the science, the possible consequences, some of the barriers to resolving the problem, the political and economic implications, what is being done and what more could be done, and the potential solutions. In doing so, the aim is to contribute to a better understanding of the crisis and to offer hope for a better, cleaner future.
Although the book looks at the obstacles to resolving the climate question—including examining the work and motives of those who deny that climate change exists or that it is a problem or that we can do anything about it—it is written with acceptance of the research and knowledge of the vast majority of scientists and other experts worldwide who have determined over many decades (if not longer) of wide-ranging study and observation that global average temperatures are steadily increasing to dangerous levels and that human activity, mainly from fossil fuel combustion, agricultural practices, and destruction of forests and green spaces, is a major contributor.
As for the terms, although “climate change” and “global warming” are used interchangeably, some experts note a subtle difference: global warming is the overall phenomenon whereby global average temperatures are steadily increasing, whereas climate change is its result. That is, as global temperatures increase, climatic conditions change in various ways. Those changes can include increased precipitation in some areas and drought in others, extreme weather where it was once rare and milder weather where it was once more volatile—and even colder spells in some places.
Finally, someone will inevitably ask, “Why should we listen to what David Suzuki says about the subject? He’s not a climate scientist.” Why, indeed? It’s true that my scientific background is not in climate science, but I am a scientist who understands the scientific method—how science is conducted, its uses, and its limitations. This book is also informed by massive amounts of research and writing by climate scientists and experts from around the world, including at the David Suzuki Foundation (DSF).
Of course, some of those who argue that only climate scientists can write and speak knowledgeably about global warming often won’t accept any rational argument or scientific evidence for human-caused climate change and its consequences. To them, I can only repeat what former California governor and action movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger posted on Facebook just before the December 2015 UN climate talks: “Besides the fact that fossil fuels destroy our lungs, everyone agrees that eventually they will run out. What’s your plan then?” He added, “A clean energy future is a wise investment, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either wrong, or lying. Either way, I wouldn’t take their investment advice,” noting that California at the time was getting 40 percent of its power from renewables and was 40 percent more energy efficient than the rest of the country, with an economy that was growing faster than the U.S. economy as a whole.
Schwarzenegger then offered a metaphor to sum up his argument:
There are two doors. Behind Door Number One is a completely sealed room, with a regular, gasoline-fueled car. Behind Door Number Two is an identical, completely sealed room, with an electric car. Both engines are running full blast.
I want you to pick a door to open, and enter the room and shut the door behind you. You have to stay in the room you choose for one hour. You cannot turn off the engine. You do not get a gas mask.
I’m guessing you chose Door Number Two, with the electric car, right? Door Number One is a fatal choice—who would ever want to breathe those fumes?
This is the choice the world is making right now.
To that I would add: What
