We must mitigate Climate Change
We can no longer ignore it
Climate is changing. The climate warms and the climate cools as it has been over the last 500,000 years for which we have reliable geologic records. Ice from an ice age melts as the climate warms and returns as the climate cools. Warming and cooling cycles have been going on over the last 500,000 years.
Human beings cannot stop global climate change. Human ingenuity and concerted human action can only mitigate the immediate effects of global climate change on human civilization.
We are now in a period when the climate is warming and it can be expected to continue warming perhaps throughout the rest of this century, but certainly over the next decade.
Climate change, however, is not uniform over the entire earth and in the individual biomes on each continental landmass and which characterize different regions of the world’s oceans.
Climate has been cycling continuously from cold to warm to cold again for hundreds of thousands of years before the “Industrial Revolution” of the early 18th century.
Returning the world Economy to the state which existed before the Industrial Revolution or, as fundamental Islam prefers, the days of the caliphate in the Seventh and Eighth centuries, will not directly affect global climate change. It certainly will not stop global warming.
Sea level is rising in many areas throughout the world. We must stop building residential dwellings and facilities for economic production in areas vulnerable to sea level rise.
Intense tropical storms are occurring regularly. Storm surge damage to coastal areas is becoming more severe. We must stop removing wetlands and natural barrier beaches which have protected coastal areas from storms for hundreds and in some areas thousands of years. Where human beings have removed those wetlands and natural barrier beaches, human beings must take immediate action to restore them. This is nowhere more apparent than along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans.
In many areas such as the Western United States the climate has become warmer and drier dramatically increasing the risk of uncontrollable wildfires. Nevertheless, tens of thousands of Americans have built residential dwellings in areas which are little more than tinder boxes for forest fires. The secondary effect of the raging forest fires engulfing the Western states is that they are spewing countless tons of particulates in the form of ash and soot into the atmosphere. Should enough of those particulates reach the stratosphere, above the cloud layer, they will diminish the amount of insolation — sunshine — reaching the surface of the earth with devastating effect upon the productivity of agricultural lands upon which the human species depends for enough food to sustain civilization.
If enough of those particulates remain in the stratosphere for more than a few months, the temperature in many areas of the world will fall for one year or more as it did during the Little Ice Age which included at least three periods of low temperature beginning in 1650, 1770, and 1850 all of them separated by periods of slight warming.
The world is ill prepared for a significant decline in agricultural productivity. In fact, the human species is ill-prepared for any significant change in the climate of the temperate zones but is doing nothing to mitigate the effects which can be reasonably expected from such climate change.
Mitigate the effects of climate change at least in the United States while there is still time
Rising temperatures throughout the country lead to drought. The larger the area of high temperatures and low rainfall the larger the area of drought. Without an almost unlimited supply of fresh, potable water, civilization as we know it shrivels and dies.
The American Economy and the Free Enterprise System upon which it is based depend upon essentially unlimited supplies of low-cost water, energy, and food. If the supply of any of those essential elements should diminish or increase in cost the American Economy stops growing and immediately starts to stagnate and decline. Those days are upon us now even if the irrational exuberance of many stock market investors ignore these fundamental facts of economic life.
Within the next few years we will continue to see megafires throughout the wooded areas of the American West and perhaps even widespread grass fires in the Great Plains of the United States and southern Canada.
We are already beginning to see much higher temperatures throughout the Southwest and much higher humidity from New Orleans to Wisconsin. This combination can turn otherwise survivable summer heat waves into significant threats to human health especially among vulnerable populations such as older Americans.
Aquifers supplying potable water to more than a third of the American people are being rapidly depleted and there seems to be no recharge for these aquifers.
Climate driven population migration
In the near future we can expect millions of Americans to start to migrate away from climate driven threats. The serious question is, “Where can they migrate to?”
Throughout the United States, census data shows clearly that the American people who certainly should know better are moving towards areas where temperature is rising, sea level is rising, drinking water is in short supply, drought is becoming more widespread, storms and dangerous violent weather events such as hurricanes, blizzards, and tornadoes are increasing in number and severity and local and regional flooding is becoming more common. It appears that climate based land-use regulations and resource management programs will soon be required to mitigate the catastrophic damage global climate change will wreak upon American society.
There is a widespread belief throughout America that money printed by the federal government and distributed through the Federal Reserve system together with technology developed at major Research Universities at taxpayers’ expense can overcome the forces of Nature. Unfortunately, the gap between what a changing climate can destroy and what money can replace is widening and may soon become too wide to bridge.
The economic disincentives which have fueled the rational response to climate risk have essentially reached the point of the return. All of the insurance plans and programs such as flood insurance for homes built on floodplains or along the coastal seashore and fire insurance for homes built in areas prone to wildfire insure risks which are all but certain to produce disasters with catastrophic damages. There is no way that private insurance companies can continue to underwrite risks at reasonable rates when those risks approach certainty of occurrence.
After the federal government expanded the Homestead Act to offer more land to settlers willing to work the marginal soils of the Great Plains, millions of farmers replaced prairie grasses with thirsty cash crops like corn, wheat, and cotton. Drought soon followed and from 1929 through 1934 crop yields across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri declined dramatically leaving farmers destitute and exposing the now barren plains to dry winds and soaring temperatures. The resulting dust storms reached the East Coast and the places the Dust Bowl migrants left behind have still not recovered.
As life in the suburbs becomes harder to sustain we can expect an exodus from the suburbs back to the cities they surround. Unfortunately the infrastructure of the cities is no longer capable of sustaining a large increase in residents. There is insufficient housing stock, inadequate transportation, antiquated water supply and sewage facilities, insufficient electric power generating capacity, insufficient health and medical services, inadequate education systems, and a woeful lack of substantial gainful employment.
Historically, periods of increasing climate change whether warming or cooling are periods of rising income disparity and social unrest. Income disparity has been increasing since the conclusion of the war in Southeast Asia and social unrest throughout the country is now upon us.
Let us stop selfishly demanding that everyone else shrink their “carbon footprint” and reduce our emissions of carbon dioxide and other “Greenhouse gases” attributable to human activity in order to “stop” or “prevent” global warming. Considering the de minimis contribution to atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases attributable to human activity, this is a meaningless exercise in global redistribution of wealth which will have little if any significant impact on global climate change. Global climate change will occur no matter what human beings decide to do about it. Let us address the immediate problems and begin to mitigate the effects of global climate change upon human civilization before it is too late.