Oct 11, 2023
Introduction
The scientifically and empirically derived facts documenting the large role played by the extraction, processing and wide use of fossil fuels in the warming of the planet has been known for generations. Humanity is now in an unprecedented global warming crisis. It is affecting some parts of the U.S. and world more than others, but, not too long from now and in the absence of sufficient ameliorating responses, it will harmfully impact all aspects of life – people, societies, economies, agriculture, oceans, and virtually everything. Scott Dance captures this dire situation, writing “the earth is at its hottest in thousands of years” (https://washingtpost.com/weather/2023/07/08/earth-hottest-years-thousands-climate).
The big oil corporations have known this since at least the 1970s. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway analyze the corporate cover-up in their book, Merchants of Doubt, and James Hoggan does so in his book, Climate Cover-Up. The oil and gas corporations knew, but did everything to cover up this evidence and to use their stupendous political clout to support the ongoing investment in oil and gas along with major subsidies from the government.
Fossil fuel emissions are not the only cause of global warming, but they are the principal cause. Jake Johnson points out that “fossil fuels made up 82% of global energy consumption in 2022 (https://commondreams.org/news/fossil-fuels-global-energy-consumption).
In a recent article, Scott Dance reports that the planet’s temperature in September 2023 surged far above previous records…even further than what scientists said seemed like astonishing increases in July and August (https://washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/10/03/september-global-temperature-record-climate).
According to Dance, “September’s temperature estimates come from models in which scientists use temperature data from around the world to calculate average global warmth. Such analyses have become a reliable complement to assessments that NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration conduct each month, but with more lag time for data review and processing.
“Temperature data derived from weather satellites also showed it was the warmest September on record, by far.”
This post refers to evidence on the fossil-fuel caused climate crisis, its effects, the counterproductive role of the Republican Party, and actions and proposals by some in the Democrat Party. The present situation poses an existential threat to Americans and people around the planet. It requires massive changes in American society and governments and people everywhere. Though the responsibility for reducing the use of fossil fuels lies mostly with the big greenhouse gas emitters, including the US, China, the European Union, and Russia.
In his new book, Our Fragile Moment, climate scientist Michael Mann points out that “only our elected policymakers…are in a position to do that,” that is, phase out the production and consumption of fossil fuels. He adds: “In the United States, one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, is largely beholden to the fossil fuel industry. And it has acted that way,” that is, it promotes a policy aimed at maximizing fossil fuel production and consumption (pp. 234-235).
This is not the popular American view. According to research on American attitudes toward “climate change,” a majority of Americans believe that there is a climate crisis and that government needs to ramp up its efforts to move away from fossil fuels toward renewables (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-data-says-about-americans-views-of-climate-change).
“Two-thirds of U.S. adults say the country should prioritize developing renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, over expanding the production of oil, coal and natural gas, according to a survey conducted in June 2023.”
Getting hotter
Juan Cole, “the Richard P.Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan and author of many books, refers to evidence that documents the connection between fossil fuel usage and the climate crisis (https://juancole.com/2023/10/frankensteins-emergency-dangerous.html).
“The data from scientific institutions around the world is pouring in here in the beginning of October, regarding September, 2023, and the consensus is that it was freakishly hot, unprecedentedly torrid, off-the-charts sweltering. It was the Frankenstein’s monster of months.
“Much of the extra heat came from human-caused climate change, from our spewing the heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to the tune of 40 billion tons a year, by burning coal, fossil gas and gasoline. In addition, this is an El Nino year, when the tides in the South Pacific work in such a way as to heat the world up. And, there seem to have been an unusual number of high pressure systems, affecting Japan, German, the US southwest, and Mexico. These may be caused by a weakened and wobbly jet stream, a result of human-caused climate change.”
Republicans deny and/or dismiss the problem
Ella Nilsen considers “why Republicans can’t get out of their climate bind, even as extreme heat overwhelms the US (https://cnn.com/2023/07/30/politics/republicans-climate-solutions-heat-wave/index.html). She writes that “the GOP is stuck in a climate bind – and likely will be for the next four years, in large part because they’re still living in the shadow of former president and 2024 Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.”
Nilsen continues. “Even as more Republican politicians are joining the consensus that climate change is real and caused by humans, Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric has driven the party to the right on climate and extreme weather. Trump has called the extremely settled science of climate change a ‘hoax’ and more recently suggested that the impacts of it ‘may affect us in 300 years.’” In other words, don’t worry about it.
Most climate scientists this week reported that this summer’s unrelenting heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” were itnot for the planet-warming pollution from burning fossil fuels. The scientistsalso point out that “the planet’s temperature is hotter now than it has been in around 120,000 years.”
Republicanswant to maximize the use of oil, gas, and coal
Inan article published in the New York Times, Lisa Friedman considers a Republican “climate strategy” for 2024 called “Project 2025” (https://nytimes.com/2023/08/04/climate/republicans-climate-project2025.html).
“Project 2025, a conservative ‘battle plan’ for the next Republican president, would stop attempts to cut the pollution that is heating the planet and encourage more emissions.
“During a summer of scorching heat that has broken records and forced Americans to confront the reality of climate change, conservatives are laying the groundwork for a future Republican administration that would dismantle efforts to slow global warming.
“The move is part of a sweeping strategy dubbed Project 2025 that Paul Dans of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank organizing the effort, has called a ‘battle plan’ for the first 180 days of a future Republican presidency.
“The plan calls for shredding regulations to curb greenhouse gas pollution from cars, oil and gas wells and power plants, dismantling almost every clean energy program in the federal government and boosting the production of fossil fuels — the burning of which is the chief cause of planetary warming.
“The New York Times asked the leading Republican presidential candidates whether they support the Project 2025 strategy but none of the campaigns responded. Still, several of the architects are veterans of the Trump administration, and their recommendations match positions held by former President Donald J. Trump, the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination.
“The $22 million project also includes personnel lists and a transition strategy in the event a Republican wins the 2024 election. The nearly 1,000-page plan, which would reshape the executive branch to place more power into the president’s hands, outlines changes for nearly every agency across the government.
“The Heritage Foundation worked on the plan with dozens of conservative groups ranging from the Heartland Institute, which has denied climate science, to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which says “climate change does not endanger the survival of civilization or the habitability of the planet.”
“Mr. Dans said the Heritage Foundation delivered the blueprint to every Republican presidential hopeful. While polls have found that young Republicans are worried about global warming, Mr. Dans said the feedback he has received confirms the blueprint reflects where the majority of party leaders stand.”
Fossil fuel use continues to increase
Catherine Rampell challenges a Republican view that the problem is that there is a ‘war on American energy and, contrariwise, reports on evidence that oil production is near record highs (https://washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/03/biden-fossil-fuels-republicans-energy-war-record.”
Rampell writes: “For years, Republicans have claimed that Democrats have waged a ‘war’ on fossil fuels.” She continues: “This narrative has featured prominently in Republican presidential debates and in front-runner Donald Trump’s remarks about striking autoworkers, among other settings. Apparently (at least according to Republicans), Democrats such as President Biden have used every tool at their disposal to squelch fossil fuel production and consumption.”
The evidence belies such claims. “After plummeting early in the pandemic,” according to Rampell, “U.S. crude oil production has been climbing and is now back near record highs. That’s according to data released Friday [Sept. 29, 2023] by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The agency also projects that oil production will hit new all-time highs next year.”
“If‘energy independence’ means exporting more than you import, we’ve achieved it in spades. The United States has been exporting more crude oil and petroleum products than it imports for 22 straight months now, far longer than was the case under Trump.”
Rampell concludes: “If this is what waging war on fossil fuels looks like, Democrats apparently aren’t very good at it. But in reality, of course, the war on fossil fuels is a pure political invention. Biden and other Democrats are hewing much more closely to the Republican pro-fossil-fuel agenda than either side would like to admit — at exactly the moment we need to push toward the future.”
The human consequences – examples
Millions of children around the planet have been affected by “climate change”
Julia Conley provides one mind-numbing example. 43 million children have been forced from their homes due to climate change over the last six years (https://commondreams.org/news/children-displaced-climate). The article was published on Oct. 6, 2023.
“The U.N.’s children’s welfare agency released a new report Friday [Oct 6, 2023] making the case for prioritizing the protection of children from fossil fuel-driven climate disasters—with more than 43 million children across the globe internally displaced in a six-year period due to drought, flooding, wildfires, and other extreme events.
In the report Children Displaced in a Changing Climate, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) details how 95% of child displacements in 44 countries from 2016-21 were due to flooding and storms, with 40.9 million children forced from their homes in countries including Guatemala, South Sudan, and Somalia.
People often go unidentified or unfound after climate-related catastrophes
Matthew Wolfe and Malcolm Araos report in the New York Times on Oct 2, 2023 that “Climate Change Is Forcing Families Into a New Kind of Indefinite Hell” (https://nytimes.com/opinion/missing-climate-change-weather-dead.html).
Dr. Wolfe is a national fellow at New America. Dr. Araos is a postdoctoral fellow at the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy at the University of Utah.
They refer first to the August wildfire that roared through the town of Lahaina in Hawaii. It “burned so hot that some of the dead were effectively cremated, their bones combusting to unidentifiable ash. Other bodies may have been lost in the Pacific Ocean, into which many of those fleeing the inferno were forced to plunge.”
Their point is that many people go missing in the aftermath of such calamities and this is a particular problem for low-income countries.
“For families of the missing, disappearance is a special kind of indefinite hell. In a wealthy country like the United States, victims of disaster tend to be quickly tallied and searched for. But poorer nations, which are already more vulnerable to the damage wrought by climate change, often don’t have the resources to follow through. We need to fund measures for these countries that both prevent disappearances through emergency preparedness and also resolve them by promptly identifying bodies. The nations responsible for the most climate pollution have a moral responsibility to help families left in limbo.”
Wolfe and Araos continue. “In addition to intensifying disasters, climate change is also leading to disappearances through migration and conflict. Some years ago, one of us, Dr. Wolfe, visited refugee camps on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios to learn more about migrants who had disappeared while trying to reach Europe. Malnutrition, hunger and famine linked to new climate conditions have pushed more Africans to undertake the perilous journey across the Mediterranean and more Latin Americans to travel through Central America and into Mexico. Tens of thousands have disappeared. Rising temperatures have also made these passages more lethal as migrants die of heat exhaustion while trekking across deserts and asphyxiate inside metal shipping containers.
“What was most striking on Lesbos and Chios was both the sheer number of people who seemed to be missing and the loneliness of their relatives’ investigations. There was no government agency their families could turn to for the help they needed, no nation willing to invest resources in searching for someone who had disappeared while crossing borders.
“Without a body to bury and visit, a loved one’s death, however likely, remains uncertain. This form of ambiguou loss makesgrieving difficult if not impossible, forestalling funerals and pushing many kin of missing persons into a potentially endless search. More practically, such absences can deprive surviving relatives of a breadwinner while also creating legal difficulties in receiving a declaration of death. Even if a person is declared dead, the wound of disappearance frequently remains unhealed. Years later, against ever thinning odds, families of the missing are still seeking some proof of their loved one’s life or death.”
The United Nations Plan
Fiona Harvey, Environmental editor at The Guardian, reports on a UN report that urges the global end to fossil fuel exploration by 2030 and funds to support poor countries meanwhile (https://theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/05/un-report-urges-end-to-fossil-fuel-exploration-by-2030).
End fossil fuel exploration globally by 2030 and increase assistance for poor countries in the energy transition
Harvey writes: “Fossil fuel exploration should cease globally by 2030 and funding to rescue poor countries from the impacts of the climate crisis should reach $200bn (£165bn) to $400bn a year by the same date, according to proposals in a UN report before the next climate summit.”
Rich countries need to meet their commitments
“Countries were still ‘way off track’ to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the report found, and much more action would be needed to make it possible to limit global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels.
“The UN’s synthesisreport on the global stocktake, published on Wednesday, will form the basis for discussions at the Cop28 conference in Dubai, which begins at the end of November. The global stocktake is a process mandated under the Paris agreement, intended to check every five years on countries’ progress on meeting their emissions-cutting goals.
Greenhousegas emissions must peak by 2025
“Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, said the report offered a range of actions for governments to consider. “[These are] clear targets which provide a north star for the action that is required by countries,” he said.
“Greenhouse gas emissions are still rising but there is broad agreement they must peak by 2025 at the latest if there is to be a chance of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C.”
Low-income countries need support
William Ruto, Moussa Faki Mahamat, Akinwumi Adesina and Patrick Verkooijen are reported to ask for increased foreign support to make the energy transition away from fossil fuels feasible in Africa, specifically pausing debt repayments (https://nytimes.com/2023/10/08/opinion/climate-change-africa-debt.html).
Mr. Ruto is the president of the Republic of Kenya. Mr. Faki is the chairman of the African Union Commission. Dr. Adesina is the president of the African Development Bank Group. Dr. Verkooijen is the chief executive of the Global Center on Adaptation.
Ruto and his colleagues point out, “When poor countries are forced to default on their foreign debt, as Ghana and Zambia have done,they pay a heavy price. Cut off from credit of any kind, spending on health, education and dealing with the damaging effects of climate change comes to a juddering halt.
“Countries in the West often plead with us to invest in the kind of ambitious resilience projects we need to survive in a warming world. But in Africa, we can’t fix the climate issue unless we fix the debt issue. Of the 52 low- and middle-income countries that have defaulted on their debts or have come close to it in the last three years, 23 are in Africa. The continent’s debt burden is skyrocketing as a result of factors beyond its control: the aftershocks of the pandemic, rising fuel and food prices, higher interest rates and climate catastrophes that weaken our economies and sap our ability to repay creditors.
“To put this figure into context, Africa is now paying more in debt service than the estimated $50 billion a year the Global Center on Adaptation says it needs to invest in climate resilience. These investments are not nice-to-haves — they are vital for building roads, bridges and dams that can withstand torrential rains and floods. Failure to do so is to invite catastrophe, as the recent floods in Libya so tragically attest.
“But instead of receiving funds to address the climate crisis, Africa is borrowing at a cost up to eight times higher than the rich world to rebuild after climate catastrophes. This is why Africa urgently needs a pause in debt repayments so that it can prepare for a world of ever greater climate extremes. The Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Marrakesh, Morocco, that begin Monday are a good place to start.”
A Democratic proposal
U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (IL-09) and Nanette Barragan (CA-44) have reintroduced legislation on Sept. 20, 2023, to end fossil fuel expansion, dubbed The Future Generations Protection Act of 2023 (https://schakowsky-house-gov/media/press-releases/schakowsky-barragan-reintroduce-legislation-end-fossil-fuel-expansion).
“This bill would help ensure a rapid shift away from fossil fuel to clean renewable energy. It has 20 co-sponsors so far. “Not only will this legislation ban greenhouse gas emissions from all new power plants, end hydraulic fracking, and ban crude oil and natural gas exports, but, most importantly, it will make our planet more habitable for future generations,” said Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky. “The science is clear: we are rapidly running out of time to prevent the worst effects of climate change. The summer of 2023 was the hottest ever on record. Our children should not be forced to suffer the consequences of our lack of action. The time to act is now and with the passage of this bill, we can make a lasting impact.”
“I’m proud to join Rep. Schakowsky in reintroducing the Future Generations Protection Act, which recognizes that increasing our dependence on fossil fuels is incompatible with a habitable planet, now and for the future,” said Congresswoman Nanette Barragán.”Communities of color are hit first and worst by the climate crisis. This year we have experienced record wildfires, extreme drought, heat waves, and stronger storms. As Democrats in Congress and President Biden work to make record investments in clean energy to reduce pollution and create millions of green jobs, we need to reduce fossil fuel infrastructure – not expand it and work against the progress we’re poised to make.”
“The Future Generations Protection Act would:
Ban greenhouse gas emissions from all new power plants.
Stop hydraulic fracking.
Ban crude oil and natural gas exports.
Prohibit the Federal Energy Resources Commission from approving new liquified natural gas terminal siting or construction, unless doing so would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Concluding thoughts
The high gas prices and their economic effects of recent months reveal how dependent the society continues to be on gas and oil, despite the science, despite public awareness, despite some state and local initiatives (e.g., David Miller, Solved: How the World’s Great Cities are Fixing the Climate Crisis), and despite falling prices for solar and wind energy.
The
solutions to the problem require major changes in the economy and in the life styles of Americans, in transportation, in housing, in diet, and more. Many Americans support relevant changes to reduce global warming in the abstract, but also want to continue their present life styles and consumption. The challenge is reflected in the sales of goods producing sectors of the economy, particularly in the tens of millions of gas-guzzling cars and light trucks on the road, how most homes and offices continue to be heated and cooled by fossil-fuel generated energy, and so on. In the final analysis, the current concerns about rising gasoline prices and the political fallout exemplify, understandably, how immediate personal financial considerations seem to overshadow or at least weaken environmental concerns. But even more important, an energy transition way from fossil fuels is blocked by the Republican Party and a right-wing rigged electoral system, along with the big oil and auto corporations and their allies.
Vital issues - challenging pol and econ power 