As I flew home from a conference in Miami recently, the air in and around Los Angeles was thicker with smoke than its normal pre-summer haze. Smog? Actually, LA air has improved a lot in the last couple of decades. It was the ever-earlier beginning of our California fire season, six weeks before historical averages and expected to last well into the end of fall. Riverside and Ventura counties were hit hard, structures burned or in jeopardy, acres of woodland gone. It was in stark contrast to the heavy rain and flooded streets I had just experienced in Florida. My business partners has just returned from a China trip, noting that the unbreatheable air they experienced on arrival gave way to a rare sighting of blue sky as a local holiday closed all the regional factories allowing a desert breeze to “do its thing.” And those are the little signs.
More serious “permanent” flooding has already taken a steep toll: “As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities… [In the late 1990s]… the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.” The Independent (UK). Is the canary in our global environmental coal mine dead or dying?
Before the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels averaged 280 parts-per-million. Scientists seem to have generated a consensus that 350 PPM is the maximum safe level of such carbon-based pollution. Nature isn’t going to wait while we figure it out… change is here, major very long-term effects are already part of daily life… and getting much, much worse much, much faster than we anticipated. “For the first time in human history,atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will surpass 400 parts per million, according Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which has been measuring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii since 1958.
“‘The 400-ppm threshold is a sobering milestone, and should serve as a wake-up call for all of us to support clean energy technology and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, before it’s too late for our children and grandchildren,’ said Tim Lueker of the Scripps Institution in a statement…. On its Web site, 350.org compares the planet’s plight and the high level of atmospheric carbon dioxide with an overweight patient with dangerously high levels of cholesterol… ‘He doesn’t die immediately — but until he changes his lifestyle and gets back down to the safe zone, he’s at more risk for heart attack or stroke,’ the Web site says.” International Herald Tribune, May 6th. Spring is typically a highpoint in the year for CO2 emissions, because the summer growth has not yet reached a level where green leaves absorb more CO2. Still, this is an unsettling milestone, one we have just passed.
I remember last year’s fire season in Australia; it looked like the entire country was burning (pictured above). The Western United States is parched, the mid-West is experiencing a weird combination of flooding and the near-term loss of that massive underground water supply (the Ogallala Aquifer), the Great Lakes have water levels so low that large barges have to reduce their cargos by 15% and the Southeast and Atlantic States face a wildly fluctuating Gulf Stream (bringing really cold temperatures and then unexpected warming) as well as a spate of very powerful hurricanes.
China is unwilling to stall projected growth and shut down its burning of low-grade coal to fire its power plants (they burn half the planet’s coal), the U.S. government is unwilling to risk an economic slowdown by setting meaningful emissions requirements for industry and developing nations cry foul when the rich nations want them to stop industrial growth to accommodate the breathing desires of developed countries. Nature just doesn’t care; she started from scratch a long time ago, and she knows she’ll have a bit more to work with next time around.
I’m Peter Dekom, and human beings seem so trivial when they simply choose to ignore the mandates of nature.
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