The World Is Changing

Posted on by communityclimatecoach_5z2lee

Last weekend was a long weekend, which meant a lot of car trips. My friend went on one and told me how he was sitting in traffic on the I-90 in bumper-to-bumper traffic and started thinking about all the gas being burned just then and just there. And he thought about electric vehicles and how “there’s no way you get all of these people to switch, and have them charging their cars for 40 minutes and all that.” 

It’s an interesting observation, mostly for what it shows about how we all still seem to think. As if there’s a choice between keeping things as they are and switching to these (oftentimes safer and healthier) low carbon technologies. But, of course, that’s not the choice. The real choice is between hanging onto our polluting habits with a death grip while the world burns before our eyes (it is happening already and will unavoidably get worse) or changing them now to spare ourselves at least the worst case future. Convincing people to switch is a matter of life and death already and increasingly will be a matter of the life and death of the people causing the pollution. 

Of course, there is another side to this. In an interesting study (that I’ve only read summaries of) Naomi Oreskes and Geoffrey Supran discuss how “Big Oil” has used “Big Tobacco” tactics to make us shoulder more responsibility for climate change than we are due, so that they can shrug it off. It’s an interesting point that I would like to spend more time thinking about. 

But in the meantime, there are big things happening in the corporate and governmental realms, evil PR notwithstanding. Yes, Shell lost a terrific Dutch lawsuit, Exxon’s management was overruled by shareholders who placed some more climate aware (let’s not say friendly) directors on the board, Chevron shareholders passed their own climate resolutions…yes, maybe a future where Big Oil/Petrochemical becomes something else is in sight. 

Unfortunately, it’s almost certainly not near enough. The recent climate news that has me most enthused is the IEA Net Zero by 2050 Report that, in a readable, actionable, clear way provides a list of over 400 targets that must be reached if we really want to reach net zero carbon emissiosn by 2050, which scientists say is necessary (but not sufficient) to keep us below 1.5 degrees C warming (which, in turn, is necessary (but maybe not sufficient) to stave off apocalyptic future climate).

Anyway, lots of stuff to think about as we head into the summer months…

Individual Action and impact

Posted on by communityclimatecoach_5z2lee

What can we do!? Sometimes I feel as though we as consumers have so much power, and other times I feel that my actions are pointless. These feel like opposing truths, and, yet, I think that both are correct. None of us can look at the huge increase in plastic waste caused by the Covid pandemic and think that consumers do not drive massive changes in business practices. Did you know that in a 2020 report, the ocean conservation organization Oceana estimated that Amazon’s plastic packaging waste (those little air filled pillows that “protect” the things we buy) could have circled the Earth 500 times? That was in 2019. As has been documented in many places (like, for example, this Scientific American article), Covid has made our plastic waste problem immeasurably worse, with hundreds of billions of masks and gloves being used every month worldwide, in addition to the increase in other plastic waste like to-go containers. 

Of course, most of the time, these impacts only happen in the aggregate. That is, it’s true that consumers’ collective use of more home delivery, more disposable PPE, more single use plastic, has an enormous impact, but it’s not true that my individual choices make that much difference. That doesn’t change the moral case, but it does change the sense of agency I get when I make my choices. 

There is an exception: proof-of-work blockchains. These are enormously energy intensive, such that a single transaction (e.g., transferring one Bitcoin or Ethereum-based NFT) could equal the carbon footprint of an average person over many years. So, despite its boosters claiming that those who oppose it are just sad to have missed out, Luddites, or missing some interesting point that actually makes them eco-friendly (twisted!), there is no doubt: buying Bitcoin and similar digital tokens that operate on proof-of-work blockchains is an environmental catastrophe that will outweigh any other actions you take. Anyone who buys such tokens does so at tremendous cost to our natural resources and the health of our future societies. No present profit is worth that cost.

But all actions are more powerful when they are taken by many people at once. I hope this site and the meetings that it encourages generate momentum as part of the larger movement of people everywhere to save our societies and redesign our lives to harmonize with nature’s incredible tunes.