Why is this Still an Issue?

One more time with feeling. On November 2^nd, the United Nations panel on climate science (IPCC) iterated that global climate change is real, it is almost entirely due to human fault and in order to limit or contain its expected and continuing devastating consequences, humanity may have to achieve zero carbon emissions by the end of the century, if not well before. “The IPCC was set up in 1988 to assess global warming and its impacts. The report released [November 2^nd] caps its latest assessment, a mega-review of 30,000 climate change studies that establishes with 95-percent certainty that nearly all warming seen since the 1950s is man-made…

“World governments in 2009 set a goal of keeping the temperature rise below 2 degrees C (3.6 F) compared to before the industrial revolution. Temperatures have gone up about 0.8 C (1.4 F) since the 19th century… Meanwhile, emissions have risen so fast in recent years that the world has already used up two-thirds of its carbon budget, the maximum amount of CO2 that can be emitted to have a likely chance of avoiding 2 degrees of warming, the IPCC report said.” AOL.com, November 2^nd. But there are too many actively opposed to imposing the limitations needed to counter these devastating trends.

These people keep talking about “costs” of environmental compliance and the expected decimation of millions and millions of jobs. It is their excuse to maintain the industrial status quo, to keep destroying the planet upon which they live. Forgetting about those still clinging to misguided Biblical interpretations of the environmental realities, there are even greater costs – which those opposing limitations choose to disassociate as “natural disasters” without ever talking about where such disasters came from – in ignoring what needs to be done to maximize our quality of life here on earth.

We’ve already seen ultra-violence in Africa and the Middle East supported by disposed farmers whose once-fertile land has turned to dust, angry that their cries, newfound poverty and desperation have been ignored by incumbents and those in power. Droughts are everywhere. Fires have raged across Australia, the Western United States, while elsewhere uncontrolled flooding, powerful storms and associated surges, redefine boundaries, agriculture, the spread of diseases and the quality of life.

Even the growth-driver, generating electrical power and encouraging automotive mobility, has produced massive economic expansion while inflicting incredible quality-of-life and hard dollar costs that no one seems willing to pay. It really seems that the actual hard dollar cost of letting greenhouse emissions continue at present or even lesser levels exceeds by quantum multiples of cash any possible “decimation” of jobs and economic growth and even ignores the massive job opportunities we can generate in implementing green energy and designing and building pollution-conscious industrial solutions to these environmental consequences. The problem isn’t that we can create new jobs and more than make up the economic loss; it’s just that the incumbent polluters cannot see how they will benefit from such new economic benefits.

Raise your hands out there… How many of you are envious enough of China’s growth to live in a city with Beijing’s air quality? To eat food grown on land with measurable toxicity based on the use of severely polluted irrigation water? To live near waterways with frequent washes of vile chemicals and even corpses of dead livestock? And yes, China is beginning to care about this as well.

China’s leader, Xi Xinping, gets it and is trying to figure it out, as evidenced by his historic agreement with President Obama during the recent APEC conference in Beijing setting hard limits for carbon emissions for both nations. Xi shut down local industrial plants for the event, sending people off on an unexpected holiday to “clear the air” (which worked), but there is a huge surge of popular support, with virtually no grassroots opposition, for powerful PRC governmental action to fix the pollution debacle in China.

Meanwhile, there is a conservative backlash in this country against the same environmental regulations and controls that may actually determine our survival someday. With the mid-terms done, and a GOP domination in Congress, there are strong winds to minimize if not eradicate the new environmental limits set by the President.

It is true that if we impose environmental quality-control requirements on our industry sectors – costs with clear dollar burdens – those businesses will be at a competitive disadvantage with those similar industries that operate under legal and social systems that make no such environmental demands. Clearly, meeting these global mandates requires global cooperation. But even the United States refuses to accept treaties that imposed defined emission limitations by dates certain. We talk out of many sides of our mouth!

“[The IPCC report] underlined the scope of the climate challenge in stark terms. Emissions, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, may need to drop to zero by the end of this century for the world to have a decent chance of keeping the temperature rise below a level that many consider dangerous. Failure to do so, which could require deployment of technologies that suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, could lock the world on a trajectory with ‘irreversible’ impacts on people and the environment, the report said. Some impacts are already being observed, including rising sea levels, a warmer and more acidic ocean, melting glaciers and Arctic sea ice and more frequent and intense heat waves…. ‘Science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in their message. Leaders must act. Time is not on our side.’ U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at the report's launch in Copenhagen.” AOL.com.

So what can you do about this? Well, communicate clearly to your elected representatives that your and your family’s quality of life needs to be a top governmental priority. We need to shift the costs of inflicting environmental damage away from subsidies from taxpayers and back to those companies that do pollute; they need to bear their share of the expected hard dollar costs we can expect from fires, floods, droughts and many supremely destructive storms (Katrina cost us over $108 billion dollars, Sandy $50 billion, etc.).

It’s time to stop such companies from the “free ride” and corporate-welfare that the government is handing out every time FEMA responds to a natural disaster, every time a patient needs treatment from a pollution-related ailment. And it’s time to embrace the new jobs we can create that can make our environment safe and enjoyable.

 I’m Peter Dekom, and we need to stop giving away taxpayer money to pay for the folly of industries that foment and cause these environmental disasters.