The Overlook
By Tom Clavin
“The Overlook” appears every Thursday at tomclavin.substack.com. An overlook is a place from which one can see in several if not all directions, including where one has been and where one is going. If you enjoy the column, please "like" it and let me know what you think by commenting (check out previous ones while you're at it). Likes, comments, and shares help with author “discoverability” on Substack.com, and all support is appreciated. Don't forget to hit the ‘Subscribe’ button – it’s free!
Only a handful of you might know of my memoir-ish collection of essays titled Promise, which was published last year. One of the lengthier essays tried to forecast the impacts of climate change. Once the book was published, I figured that was that. But now I’m drawn back to the topic because events this year have demonstrated that the more serious impacts of climate change are going to be felt sooner and be more severe than many people are prepared for, and because of the international conference on climate change going on right now in Glasgow. And a third reason: If all goes well, my first grandchild will be born next month. Her name will be Cassandra, and with some hubris I am allowing that name to give me permission to further forecast the future. (According to Greek mythology, Cassandra, a Trojan princess, was given the gift of prophecy.)
In this essay and the ones to follow, I am l looking to 2031, the year Cassandra will turn 10. It will be a year after the “tipping point” of 2030, which some experts have predicted will be the make-or-break year for Earth’s climate. They have maintained that if we have not done enough by then to reduce the heating of the planet, the consequences will be irreversible. It would be nice to express optimism here, but my belief is that we will not do enough and that Cassandra’s generation will face environmental challenges that for my generation at that age were unimaginable. All is not lost, however. What we need more of is seeing what is happening in a clear-eyed way and preparing for the consequences. Not doing things that harm the Earth is not enough, we must immediately be proactive about what can be done to heal it. If we don’t, our fall-back position is how do we best accommodate living in an environmentally degraded world, with some if not the majority of the planet’s population simply unable to do so.
The outcome of the Glasgow conference will be a strong indication of the possibility of true cooperation among the major nations to reduce the climate change impacts or it will be a harbinger of the destructive free-for-all that the rest of this decade will see. Ideally, actions will be agreed upon and soon enacted which will result in only a 1.5-degree Celsius warming of Earth by 2100. This will take some arm-wrestling, but at least for today, I am hopeful. Based on the current policies of the world’s countries, humanity is on a pace for a 3-degree increase by 2100, which is predicted to have devastating consequences. Many countries have pledged to do better than that, perhaps as well as a 2-degree increase. However, the difference between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees can mean millions of lives lost and economies ravaged. We are now three years away from the 2018 warning by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that was, according to the United Nations, was “a deafening, piercing smoke alarm going off in the kitchen.” Have enough people been persuaded in just three years?
From what I have gathered, weather and other events in the United States in 2021 have impressed even the doubters, and the good news is there may be fewer of them. To me, there are five categories of climate change outlooks: (1) The outright deniers. (2) Those who agree with the science but don’t care. (3) Those who agree yet think the more destructive impacts are still many years away, so for now they continue to give priority to the ongoing use of fossil fuels and express concerns about the impact of climate-friendly measures on the economy. (4) Agree but feel helpless to make a difference. (5) Agree and want to do or at least support positive actions. I’d like to think that especially after the past few months that fifth category is the one growing the fastest.
In my darker moments I view climate change like I do my scoliosis – it can’t be cured, it can’t be reversed, the best I can do is slow the pace of the curve to buy as much quality time as possible. Thankfully, though, the world is hardier and more resilient than I am. And with a granddaughter about to enter it, I am trying to be more encouraged about her future. So on better days my view on climate change is like the Serenity Prayer – accept what it’s too late to change, change what we can, and be smart enough to know the difference. I am by no means a doomsayer, it’s more that we need to have a pretty good idea via science of what will happen during the next decade so that we can prepare for it. For some of us, that is going to be like making lemonade out of lemons.
I’m going to address several components and consequences of climate change, including fire and heat, storms and floods, hunger and disease, refugees, and a changed political, social, and cultural landscape as we cope with these impacts. This will take a few weeks. Yes, I’m giving readers a fair warning about a multi-part essay. To those for whom that is too much: See you in December.
As something of a preface: The Covid-19 pandemic has been an illuminating experience in at least four ways. Climate change is our ongoing pandemic and no single vaccine is going to greatly reduce the impacts. And how divided we were in combating the virus does not bode well for pulling together, accepting the realities based on science, and doing what needs to be done to protect ourselves and our neighbors. Also, what we are seeing and will see more starkly is Nature itself infecting us. (There are no antibodies for that.) And just as with the coronavirus, many of us erected walls and other barriers to be safe. Going forward, I believe we will do that on a massive scale. Mr. Trump’s penchant for walls was more prescient than many of us knew.
Since March 2020, we have been harshly confronted with what a pandemic can do to everyday life and how vulnerable we are . . . and there will be another global virus, perhaps several, in the next few years. With climate change, we are wasting time debating it as a political issue. It does not matter anymore if it is or is not being caused by man and if you’re a Republican or Democrat. It is a scientific fact that the planet is heating up. Whether this is from carbon emissions or part of a long-term natural cycle or witchcraft is irrelevant. It is a scientific fact that emissions from the burning of fossil fuels is exacerbating the heating of the planet, making it hotter faster.
Let’s look at the overall picture before the specific impacts. I was dismayed three months ago when there was not more coverage – and more outcry from it – of the United Nations report released that month. The opening of the lead story in the August 9 edition of the New York Times was certainly sufficiently alarming for me: “Nations have delayed curbing their fossil-fuel emissions for so long that they can no longer stop global warming from intensifying over the next 30 years.” There was a faint glimmer of hope in that “there is still a short window to prevent the most harrowing future.”
We are in that window now. What needs to be done can no longer be put off. It’s not the day after tomorrow that will be too late, it is tomorrow. The article continued, “Even if nations started sharply cutting emissions today, total global warming is likely to rise to around 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next two decades, a hotter future that is now essentially locked in.” By comparison, earth has heated up by 1.1 degree Celsius since the 19th century, meaning we will exceed that in just the next 20 years.
Just in case this article on the U.N. report was not unambiguous enough, later in it is this paragraph: “The changes in climate to date have little parallel in human history. The last decade is quite likely the hottest the planet has been in 125,000 years. The world’s glaciers are melting and receding at a rate unprecedented in at least the last 2000 years.” Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have not been this high in two million years.”
Gosh, that isn’t good, is it? What about that window? In a separate report, the United Nations warned that carbon emissions must fall by half by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. Otherwise, according to Antonio Guterres, the secretary general of the U.N., “The disruption to economies, societies and people caused by Covid-19 will pale in comparison.”
Okay, you don’t care about the rest of the world. We’re safe enough in the United States, right? Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency issued its annual report on climate indicators. This was the first annual report the EPA produced since 2016 because the Trump administration, being in the climate change-denial camp, put a stop to the studies. The new one, according to a Times article, “shows that a warming world is making life harder for Americans, in ways that threaten their health and safety, homes and communities.” Michael Regan, the EPA head, was quoted: “There is no small town, big city, or rural community that is unaffected by the climate crisis. Americans are seeing and feeling the impacts up close, with increasing regularity.”
As difficult as it will be on a daily basis, we must say goodbye to “normal” and change our outlook and behaviors. In an essay earlier this year, Roy Scranton, who heads the Notre Dame Environmental Initiative, wrote that “the earth’s climate seems to be changing faster than expected. Take the intensifying slowdown in the North Atlantic current, a global warming side effect made famous by the film ‘The Day After Tomorrow.’ According to the climatologist Michael Mann, ‘We are 50 years to 100 years ahead of schedule with the slowdown of this ocean circulation pattern, relative to what the models predict.’
“In 2019, the Greenland ice sheet briefly reached daily melt rates predicted in what were once considered worst-case scenarios for 2060 and 2080. Recent research indicates that rapidly thawing permafrost may release twice as much carbon dioxide and methane than previously thought, which is pretty bad news, because other recent research shows very cold Arctic permafrost thawing 70 years earlier than expected. Going back to normal now means returning to a course that will destabilize the conditions for all human life, everywhere on earth. Normal means more fires, more Category 5 hurricanes, more flooding, more drought, millions upon millions more migrants fleeing famine and civil war, more crop failures, more extinctions, more record-breaking heat. Normal means the increasing likelihood of civil unrest and state collapse, of widespread agricultural failure and collapsing fisheries, of millions of people dying from thirst and hunger, of new diseases, old diseases spreading to new places and the havoc of war.”
Plain enough: No one is immune. We are the world. The situation is worsening. However, we can still take measures that will make a significant difference.
Now to look at a breakdown of impacts. Next week: The heat is on.
Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books, including Tombstone, Blood and Treasure (with Bob Drury), and Lightning Down: A World War II Story of Survival, just published by St. Martin’s Press. To purchase a copy, please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, or BN.com.
Tell me can you feel it? Tell me can you feel it? Tell me can you feel it?