@2006 by Jim Gordon

 

            There is a moment in most of the black and white science fiction films I saw on television growing up, where the confused populace finally get a good look at the creature or creatures that are threatening horrible havoc. Usually, they and the viewer realize it is much more horrible even than imagined.  

What I saw recently was the monster. It’s a pretty big bastard and maybe we can’t stop it. But we have to try and so first, we have to stop pretending it isn’t there. And basically the monster is us, diddling in the face of disaster. I don’t mean individuals aren’t doing acts that matter, but collectively, it’s as if each of us is continuing hoeing our garden as Godzilla draws ever nearer our village.  

            Here’s an example of what I mean. New York State Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner Denise M. Sheehan came to Marist College on September 29 to discuss the Empire State’s participation in a cutting edge program to combat global warming. But the bureaucracy hasn’t exactly sprung into action, more like roused itself to begin formulation of relevant regulations that will take effect sometime next decade, unless they are delayed in court, and which will not reduce the problem, only slow had fast it is worsening.  

 Commissioner Sheehan especially touted the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI),  an agreement announced in August  among seven northeastern states, which won’t be implemented until 2014. Even then, it would not actually cut the volume of greenhouse gases being emitted by our coal and oil powered electric plants, it would only slow the rate of growth.  Sheehan readily acknowledged that fact and, correctly pointed out that it is still a laudable advance in combating climate change. Along with a similarly modest program in California, the REGI initiative is as progressive as it gets in America.  

Yet, it’s a little like sneezing toward Godzilla. You might feel better but the monster won’t notice.   

Enter Godzilla

Want to see the monster? According to NASA climatologist Dr James Hansen, if the global temperatures rises another three to six degrees Fahrenheit, an amount well within the range of projected temperature increases by the end of the century, that would mean the planet is warmer than at any time since the late Pliocene, about 3 million years ago. At that time, sea levels were estimated to be about 80 feet higher than today’s levels.

 

In the sci-fi movie, this would be the scene where the villagers begin feeling the ground reverberate a bit, and look uneasily about. The monster is already visible, and looming ugly in the near distance but somehow they don’t admit to seeing it.      

 

“Changes are happening   much more quickly than scientists thought they would, even five years ago,” said Ross Gelbspan. a Pulitzer prize winning reporter who wrote the book, The Heat is On, examining effects of climate change. He maintains the excellent website www.heatisonline.org

 

 “It’s going to be way too late if we wait for students to get to positions of influence before tackling this problem. Its going to be way too late,” said Gelbspan,

 

The increased intensity of storms such as hurricanes has already reached levels that scientists had predicted would not occur until 2085.  A slew of recent data suggests that further delay in reducing greenhouse gas emissions may subject the planet to a runaway greenhouse effect, with unknown and potentially catastrophic consequences. Earth is already warmer than she has been at any time since the last ice age about 12,000 years ago, and the icecaps and glacier are melting at an accelerating rate. So as dark water replaces white reflective ice, more sunlight is being absorbed, warming waters and increasing the melting as water temperatures rise. 

 

Meanwhile, the melting permafrost in the far north is releasing large amounts of methane that was frozen in the ground up into the atmosphere, where it is an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon. 

Citing these and other factors, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in 2005 told an international conference examining the effects of climate changes “We are risking the ability of the human race to survive.” Ironically, Dr. Pachauri was named to head the panel at the request of the United States, under the Bush administration, after complaints from Exxon and others that his predecessor in the post was too aggressive regarding action needed to combat climate change.

“That is not the kind of language diplomats normally use,” noted Gelbspan.

 

            Let the Kids Figure It Out

 

The facts are clear, compelling and frightening. So what urgent action is being taken by New York state’s top environmental official?  “This is going to be one of the major issues for your generation especially,.” commissioner Denise M. Sheehan told the students at Marist College on September 29.

 

            Thump. Thump. Thump. Disaster is getting closer. Yet, even traveling at the speed of clumsy giant lizard, its effects have begun manifesting themselves, in ways subtle and obvious. Spring comes earlier and winter isn’t as harsh around here. Canadian geese are now living here year round, instead of migrating through as they did when I moved here about 30 years ago   The biggest hurricanes and typhoons ever observed have rampaged at sea and on land over the last five years or so.

 

 The various phenomenon of climate change will occur with increasing speed in our life times, for carbon builds in the atmosphere over time, there is a lag between the pollution being emitted and its contributions high in the atmosphere to warming the planet. Some scientists say we are only now feeling effects from carbon emitted in the 1970s, so there will be a delay before healing begins, even after corrective action is taken. The question now is limiting the damage.

 

            Yet, there is no cause to hurry, at least in the mind of officials. Sheehan is a political appointee of the lame duck Pataki administration and nothing much is happening in Albany these days as everyone awaits the arrival of a new governor in January.

 

Still, Sheehan is actually, on paper, quite an important official, she heads an agency with an annual budget of   $1.5 billion. So it was nice of Commissioner Sheehan  to drive, apparently alone, the 90 minutes from Albany to Poughkeepsie to talk up the modest program for a classroom jammed with about seventy five students.

 

 For the journalist it was interesting to meet the commissioner so informally, but in truth, as a resident of the world,  I would prefer that she had been too busy in the state capital implementing ways to actually reduce greenhouse emissions, rather than spend so much time educating students on the intricacies of a New York’s bewildering “cap and trade” program.

 

Officially getting with the program

 

“Confronting” global warming, under this plan, will involve Wall Street brokers arranging a sales of  “pollution credits,” where power plant operators don’t actually reduce the plume of pollution leaving their stack, but instead pay a company to go out, for example, to capture an equivalent quantity of methane from a landfill, and “trade” that pollution for “credits” that allow the power plant to keep spewing carbon at the rate. It is a good economic solution, Sheehan assures us.    Thump, thump, thump, louder now.

 

Under questioning, Sheehan did acknowledge New York’s modest program is no where near enough, and that federal programs were needed to make a dent. Remember, even when fully enacted in 2014, RGGI will not actually cut greenhouse gas emissions, but only reduce how fast the problem would continue growing if no action is taken. “It doesn’t sound like a lot, but if we do nothing, the numbers [rates of greenhouse gas emission] continue to climb,” Sheehan told students. But even if it works, the concentration of  greenhouse gasses  will continue to rise, albeit  more slowly. If RGGI is successful it will mean  “A 35 percent reduction over what otherwise would have happened,” Sheehan said.

 

She dodged questions about making efficiency measures mandatory, instead saying how great it was that appliances sold in New York must attain certain levels of efficiency to be given a certain label. Asked whether the state should mandate retrofitting its buildings for efficiency, she simply didn’t answer.

 

A Manhattan Project against global warming might seem prohibitively expensive, but the economic activity of retrofitting efficient light bulbs and wrapping heaters, installing solar on rooftops and financing tree plantings and rooftop gardens would spark the state’s economy, even without considering he billions of dollars that would remain circulating in the state’s economy, instead of being sent, literally down into the dry deserts of the mid east. 

Why not try? After all, even under Sheehan’s modest predictions of the trouble coming from climate change, the stakes are high. New York State has roughly $2 trillion in coastal infrastructure that could be at risk, under scenarios that are now considered to be moderate predictions, of a one foot to three foot rise in sea level by the end of the century. She noted that for every foot of sea level rise, projections posit the loss of 100 feet of coastline. The effect could be devastating, especially in New York City and on Long Island, both of which essentially lie at or below sea level. “What will it take to keep New York City from being impacted, that’s really the issue,” Sheehan said. “I don’t want to use it as a scare tactic, but the cost of not acting, that is what is really, really significant.”  

            Even under the best case scenario Sheehan says effects will span the state, from the possible loss of the state tree, the sugar maple and its colorful foliage and maple syrup products, to the melting away of the skiing industry. She noted that warming sea water could spread the salt line into previously fresh water supplies, that invasive species could create havoc in the state ecosystem, that warmer weather could facilitate the spread of tropical diseases into new territory.    

“The potential list of impacts really does go on and on, but just this small snippet highlights that our infrastructure and environment is really vulnerable to climate change,” said Sheehan.
 

Nukes may mutate new monsters, but hey-   

It seems that in every sci-fi monster movie of my youth some mad man wanted to attack the monster with nuclear weapons, and now in real life, Dr. James Loveock  creator of the famous Gaia hypthoesis has publicly argued that global warming is already so bad, and threatens so much worse, that we must shift to nukes to avert catastrophe. The idea is like something out of a science fiction nightmare, fend off a planetary warming by producing tons of material, the nuclear waste, that is so toxic it will kill for tens of thousands of years.  

Happily Sheehan, when asked about the nuclear option, said that too many other risks arise from nuclear power plants and the unsolved problem of their waste that endures  eons to consider a crash course in nukes as a viable defense from global warming. Remember, in the original Japanese movie, made shortly after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Godzilla was a mutation that arose from nuclear explosions and testing.  

Despite Sheehan’s stance, there is a growing chorus of voices advocating that civilization, in effect, nuke the threatening beast of climate change. Nuclear power plants do not emit large quantities of greenhouse gases. So we have the spectacle that would itself delight science fiction writers, of a world where evil oil barons spread propaganda that delays by decades the wide spread realization that climate change is a terrible reality, so that nutty nuclear power advocates can say, damn the risks, let’s build new nukes now. And this debate occurs in an atmosphere so uncomfortably warm as to make many otherwise intelligent people see nukes as a reasonable idea.   

Starting in Kyoto, ending with your kid 

Our neighbors around the global village have largely acknowledged that Godzilla is trodding hereabouts on clumsy feet, potentially breathing fire. Most of the industrialized world is committed to the targets of the Kyoto Accord on global warming, which the Bush administration repudiated, but which would mandate greenhouse gas reductions until the world was below the levels emitted in 1990. Even that is likely not a large enough reduction to prevent the problem from worsening, but it is at least a respectable start at dealing with the problem. 

Meanwhile, New York earnestly begins to set up a program that ultimately starts to only slow the rate of havoc the giant monster wreaks. The monster is coming. How long are before we villagers realize we must start to fight it off by ourselves?     

Ask a child how long they want you to patiently wait.  

 

end