Big Projects Combat Climate Change

"Oddly, few modern educational systems spend much time teaching systematically about the future," David Christian writes in his book, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything. A teach-in, modeled on the protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s, did inspire the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. What those students learned in the past half century is: environmental converts relapse. Efforts to promote fossil fuel alternatives, recycling, foregoing plastic, and organic farming have produced only marginal results.

     While enlightened solutions to environmental mischief need to continue, ideas for major projects required to combat the effects of unchanged behavior on global warming also need to begin. Germany's Max Planck Institute for Chemistry expects temperatures of 115 degrees Fahrenheit to be five times more likely by 2050 than they were when extreme temperatures spiked in 2000. In 2016 and 2017, Kuwait and Iran began competing to break the highest reliably recorded temperature.

     

     Do work and education have to take place in the heat of the day? For religious reasons, business already is conducted at night in Muslim countries during Ramadan. Research shows teens need more sleep than they get when their bodies want to stay up until 11 pm or later and schools expect them to arrive at 7:30 am or 8. In Las Vegas, I understand some students already attend classes at night. While living in Jamaica, Noel Coward wrote a song based on his observations.

At twelve noon the natives swoon

and no further work is done.

But Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. 

     Working and learning during hotter climate changing days will require more and more air conditioning to keep people from dying from the heat and rats and insects from devouring and contaminating harvested food. To reduce the greenhouse gases and ozone pollution that air conditioning generates requires the difficult tasks of developing less toxic refrigerants and reducing the need for electricity. It would be much easier and faster to move the time for work and study to a cooler time of the day.

     Trees are recognized as climate change saviors. They produce shade, reduce pollution, and sop up greenhouse gases. China is planting a tree wall to protect Beijing from sand/dust storms from the Gobi Desert. To produce these benefits, trees (as well as crops) need a system for channeling excess monsoon water their way.

     Try asking kids who are building with blocks or computers to design a system to carry too much water from hurricanes and monsoons to drought areas. Why not locate pieces of aluminum pipe in various parts of the world that governments can fit together like LEGOs to make temporary pipes that channel overflowing lakes and rivers to forests and crop land suffering from drought? In Origin Story, Christian writes about moments in history when "Goldilocks conditions" are just right, like Baby Bear's porridge, for transitions in evolutionary change. Often these moments are "aha" insights when someone combines things that already exist in a new way.

     In an earlier post, "Gone Fishin'," I reported on the long floating plastic boom designed to collect plastic and other debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as "the blob" between California and Hawaii that forms the warm water that seems to nourish the warm, dry winters dehydrating forests along the northwest coast of North America. Could this plastic garbage be melted for use in 3D printers? Maybe it could provide insulation and furniture for the 3D houses printed for the world's 68.5 million refugees now living in makeshift camps. (See more about "building" 3D houses at the earlier post, "Necessity: Introduce Students to New Technologies.")

     Invite kids who are not bound by what is and what always has been to think about ways to solve the new challenges climate change does and will continue to present. How can solar and wind energy be stored and distributed? What can be done to reduce the amount of stuff ending up in methane-generating dumps? Students who love science fiction also might look into the solar geoengineering ideas that involve improving the ability of clouds to block or reflect sun rays. Insect control without dangerous chemicals, endangered animals, shipping and public transportation, drought-resistant crops and farming methods, all need big new plans for the best future. 

      

   

Priority: Eliminate generating electricity from fossil fuels

Not only Disneyland and China design model cities for the future, schoolgirls and young boys also use cereal boxes, LEGOs, and every other sort of building toy to create their own visions of home. What the Visions and Pathways 2040 project at the University of Melbourne did, that was a bit different, was design a greener, cleaner city AND a path to get there from here.

A group of 250 experts from various disciplines collaborated to determine how to reach the year 2040 with cities that cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 80%. They realized they could work with many technologies, such as bladeless wind turbines, solar panels on skyscrapers, and roof and vertical gardens, that already exist. But future suburbs might look very different with less privacy because of clustered townhouses with solar roofs. At the same time, indiscriminate land clearing outside cities and for housing developments would be replaced by forest preservation and regeneration of shade trees used to capture and store carbon dioxide. Urban dwellers would get around through local forests by electric transport, bike trails, and walkways. A CSIRO-developed Australian Stocks and Flows Framework helped model these new cities and the path to them.

The Melbourne project also identified the direct and indirect emissions cities would need to reduce or eliminate. Transport, landfill waste, and buildings caused about 16% of direct carbon dioxide emissions in cities. While the energy used by the heavy industry and agricultural production needed to supply cities also caused indirect emissions, the need for electricity generated almost half of a city's indirect carbon footprint. That meant replacing the fossil fuel burned by power stations with clean technologies was a priority.

Experts saw the transition to ecocities initiated by: 1) city governments that used sanctions to discourage businesses and organizations from carbon-producing activities or 2) citizen movements that foster cooperatives and engage in cultural, political, and economic decisions. By visiting visionsandpathways.com/, you can get the entire Visions and Pathways 2040 report. The challenges it presents are something to think and talk about during the holidays and before making a New Year's Resolution to help your community create a positive climate change.

Boil or Preserve the Planet?

Attention to rising temperatures and sea levels is generating positive and negative reactions, depending on which side of the climate change citizens, organizations, and governments are on.

     An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, the new film on climate change from former U.S. Vice President and presidential candidate, Al Gore, opened at movie theaters  August 4, 2017.

     In her current book, No Is Not Enough, Naomi Klein reports current U.S. Secretary of State and former head of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson, expects humans to adapt to an overheated planet by moving crop production around as they have in the past, when weather patterns changed. Yet, ExxonMobil's oil and gas drilling equipment has arrived in the Arctic before the world's farmers, who can't work long outdoors even if their crops and livestock could survive in blistering heat.

     Although James Hansen, who formerly headed NASA's climate research team, expects melting polar ice caps to keep temperatures cooler than some suggest, he believes the melting cannot help but cause a rise in sea levels. He further notes a mass inland migration of people from flooded coastal cities could cause ungovernable chaos.

     Klein's book reveals Exxon's scientists knew as far back as 1978 there was general scientific agreement that humans burning fossil fuels released the carbon dioxide that influenced climate changes, and only five to 10 years remained before a serious decision to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy sources was needed. A report by the Climate Accountability Institute found 25 investor-owned corporate and state-owned fossil fuel producers, including ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron, are responsible for half of all global greenhouse gas emissions since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established in 1988.

     In California, three communities already have filed law suits for compensation from oil, gas, and coal companies for current and future costs of property damage from and adapting to rising sea levels. San Mateo, Marin, and San Diego counties claim that instead of working to reduce the impact of  fossil fuel emissions that they had known about for up to 50 years, they launched a campaign to discredit scientific findings about climate change.

     Members in the U.S. House of Representatives, according to insideclimatenews.org, have been voting to prevent regulatory agencies from evaluating future damage from greenhouse gas pollution, to streamline environmental reviews of pipelines and electric transmission projects that cross state borders, and to sponsor legislation supporting federal coal leasing. In contrast, a bipartisan House caucus of 6 Democrats and 7 Republicans introduced the Climate Solutions Commission Act of 2017 (H.R.2320) to establish a National Climate Solutions Commission. By appointing Commission members, the President and Congressional leaders from both parties would acknowledge climate change is "real, human caused, and requires solutions." Based on the latest scientific findings, Commission members would recommend to the President, Congress, and the States policies and actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

     Environmental organizations, such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, are warning investors in publicly traded fossil fuel producers that they are jeopardizing the value of their stock holdings, since auto makers are moving toward electric and hybrid models and companies, such as Apple, Facebook, Google, and Ikea, are leading the way to a corporate culture committed to the use of 100% renewable power.

     Finally, the Arbor Day Foundation (arborday.org) has a program to help homeowners absorb air pollution and reduce the need for fossil fuel-generated energy. To find out if there is a nearby active U.S. program to select trees and determine the best location to plant them to provide shade around homes, go to arborday.org/est.

Troubled Northwest Passage Found

Even before the US decided it would be one of only three countries not bound by the goals for green- house gas emissions established in the 2015 Paris climate accord, the planet warmed to open a Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean. For example, cruise ships now travel from Alaska to New York without icebreaker assistance.

     Still, there is no guarantee that ships won't be grounded in a storm or that oil, natural gas, and mineral exploration in newly accessible waters won't accidentally endanger whales and migrating birds. Clean up in the cold Arctic where it is dark much of the year is an impossible task. Even without an incident, increased shipping activity introduces the new and unknown impact of underwater noise, dirty water, sewage discharge, and invasive species in the Arctic. With Russia now training military troops in Siberia, there also is a chance of aggression from the far North.

     Sunlight that the Arctic's ice used to reflect now helps quicken sea ice melt, at the rate of 10% per decade, and raises sea levels to threaten inhabitants of islands and coastal cities worldwide. As the disappearance of sea ice forced polar bears onto land, villagers along the Bering Straight needed to form polar bear patrols to protect students walking to school. Residents in the entire Alaskan village of Shishmaret had to relocate when their home began falling into the water. They will not be the only ones faced with the need to move to new homes.

     The reduced difference between temperatures in the Arctic and those in more temperate southern zones causes the fast moving air current, known as the jet stream, to weaken and make extreme weather changes of drought, heat, snow, and floods more likely in North America, Europe, and Asia.

     In 1996, representatives of Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Russia, and the United States formed an Arctic Council for scientific and environmental study of the Arctic. This advisory body has not shown the leadership needed to outline a vision for the Arctic. Instead, the UN's International Maritime Organization stepped up to provide a Polar Code of environmental regulations for polar shipping. And under President Obama, the US on its own initiative prohibited oil and gas drilling in the Chukchi Sea and most of the Beaufort Sea. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has declared a five year moratorium on offshore oil development in Canada's Arctic waters.

     Private companies are developing their own polar vision to generate geothermal steam energy from water heated in pipes by molten magma from Iceland's volcanoes. Buying into the possibilities of an expensive 20-year project to send clean, renewable volcanic energy from the Krafla Magma Testbed through North Atlantic underwater cables to power turbines in the UK, Netherlands, and/or Denmark are Iceland's Landsvirkjun, Norway's Statoil, Canada's Falco Resources, and US-based Sandia National Laboratories. Iceland's residents have received reassurances that drilling in the Krafla site will not trigger a volcanic eruption.

(For an earlier discussion of developments in the Arctic, go to the post, "North Pole Flag.")

   

   

Turn Off, Power Down, and Act Up

The conservation-minded World Wildlife Fund included the following list of planet-helping reminders in its current catalog (wwfcatalog.org).

• Take a 5-minute shower that uses 10 to 25 gallons of the world's precious clean water resources compared to about 70 gallons for a bath.
• Turn off faucets while brushing teeth, soaping up hands, and putting shampoo in hair. Running a water faucet not only uses up clean water but running it for 5 minutes uses as much energy as lighting a 60-watt bulb for 14 hours. 
• Turn off computers or use "sleep mode" to save energy when they're not in use. Unplug electronic devices when not in use over a long period of time (overnight), because many still use energy when switched off.
• Buy local at farmers' markets and grocery stores, and eat local at restaurants whenever possible. That reduces the need for the climate warming gas used to transport fruits and vegetables up to 1,500 miles.
• Reduce the gas used for your own trips by walking, biking, or taking a bus or train.
• Replace regular light bulbs with energy-saving compact fluorescent lights. 
• Investigate using solar panels to save energy and cost in your home. Make sure to replace failing refrigerators and freezers that can account for 1/6 of a home's energy bill with appliances that are certified energy efficient.

Read more information about energy and environmental concerns at the earlier blog post, "A Healthy Environment."