Category: Hope

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Action Global Climate Change Hope

Acknowledge this Symptom of Overpopulation

By the time  you read this it will be too late to attend the Climate Change Symposium. However, there are several points I want to make by broadcasting information about this symposium:
A small group of committed activists can make a difference in their communities. The Fort Lewis College Environmental Center is a wonderful organization that has reached hundreds of students through the years; their two person staff has taken on this large project with some volunteers and great aplomb.
It is important to involve young people–by the latest count, we will have over 300 high school students attending
Top speakers are willing to come to a little community such as Durango. Katharine Hayhoe will be in Canada, but she will reach us by a video made just for this symposium. We will also be showing one of her YouTube videos. Travis Rieder will be at his office at Johns Hopkins University but communicating by Zoom. Dr. Rieder spoke in Durango a couple of years ago and won a lot of praise for his presentation on the ethical imperative of having small families.
Thank you for reading!
Richard

 

“Humans are at the centre of global climate change: …social change is key to effectively respond to climate change”   IPPC Special Report

Do you remember the politicians in North Carolina who passed a law in 2012 that prohibited calculating sea level rise based on climate change predictions? They said only historical trends could be used.

That law, promoted by real estate developers, postponed planning for the consequences of climate change. Only 6 years later they were visited by a wrathful storm that dropped 3 feet of rain on parts of the state!

I wonder how the legislature feels now that they have been visited by reality in the form of Hurricane Florence. (Although the law concerned sea level rise, immense precipitation caused the damage.) My hope is that legislators have learned that they cannot mess successfully with the laws of nature and physics.

Many of the changes we’re experiencing now are due to anthropogenic (human caused) climate disruption. The list includes more destructive hurricanes; the estimated cost of Florence is 38 billion dollars and the human toll is 53 deaths.

Michael is the most recent hurricane; it was another monster. Almost a category 5 storm, it hit with terrifyingly destructive winds. There was “unimaginable destruction”, to quote Florida’s Governor Rick Scott. “So many lives have been changed forever. So many families have lost everything. Homes are gone. Businesses are gone.” 

Yet Scott does not believe in climate change. Apparently staff at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection were told not to use the terms “climate change” or “global warming” after he became governor.

Why have we been punished with so many destructive storms recently? Part of the problem is that governments are failing to recognize that climate change is increasing the frequency of these deadly and costly storms. Even a slight increase in the air and water temperatures gives significantly more energy to form cyclonic storms.

Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma wrote a book about climate change titled “The Greatest Hoax”. I don’t think that people in Florida and the Carolinas will be reading that book much now.

How is it possible that some people who don’t believe that climate change is real, or think that it is all just natural cycles that are causing it? How is that possible when these people know that humans are increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? How does one talk with someone who denies climate change?

“Climate Change Solutions” is the second symposium at Fort Lewis College on the subject. It will be held Tuesday October 30th. Last year’s meeting focused on the science, this year will focus on ways that individuals can help deal with this global problem.

The symposium is coming just in time! Evidence is mounting that there is urgent need for solutions to climate change. Earlier this month the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a special report which can be summarized: “…drastic action must be taken in limited time to avoid severe and worsening consequences.”

Highly respected climate scientist Kevin Trenberth was one of the speakers last year. He wrote: “…humans are the main agents of change.” This is a bit ambiguous; in context, he meant that climate disruption is anthropogenic. It can also mean that we can also solve this global problem. Trenberth explained the destructiveness of this summer’s storms thusly: “While hurricanes occur naturally, human‐caused climate change is supercharging them and exacerbating the risk of major damage.”

Climate Change Solutions will have 2 sessions, starting at 12:30 and 6:30, at the Community Concert Hall on the Fort Lewis College campus. Because cimate change will affect today’s kids much more than my generation, we have invited several hundred students from area high schools. All College people will have free admission.

A member of US Senator Michael Bennet’s staff will urge people to vote for politicians who don’t deny climate change, and update us on what is happening in Washington to fight this global disruption There will be suggestions about effective ways to talk to climate change deniers.

Another speaker will tell us about the most effective way to quell climate change. You guessed it! Climate change is really a symptom of overpopulation and of overconsumption. Choosing to have a small family is the most effective action in the long run an individual can take. We also need actions that will work in the short run.

For more information about Climate Change Solutions and tickets search the calendar at: https://www.durangoconcerts.com. I hope to see you there!

©Richard Grossman MD, 2018

Categories
Hope Population

Heed this Warning

In 1992 the Union of Concerned Scientists published the “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity”. Twenty-five years later it has just been updated.

Most of the Nobel Prize winners then alive and 1575 senior scientists signed the original warning. It started with the words: “Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know.”

After this powerful introduction there are several headings. The heading titled “Population” states what many people (especially economists) are still denying. It starts with: “The earth is finite.”

Later in the “Population” heading you can read: “Pressures resulting from unrestrained population growth put demands on the natural world that can overwhelm any efforts to achieve a sustainable future.” I find it remarkable that those who write about “sustainable development” so often ignore this obvious fact.

This 1992 Warning had 5 points under the title “What We Must Do”. Point #3 states: “We must stabilize population. This will be possible only if all nations recognize that it requires improved social and economic conditions, and the adoption of effective, voluntary family planning.” Unfortunately this was all but ignored. In fact, just 2 years later, at the UN’s International Conference on Population and Development, delegates decided to turn the focus away from population and toward HIV and reproductive rights. This had an unfortunate effect on support for family planning programs.

So much for the past. Not too many people were aware of the 1992 document, and fewer took it to heart. Scientists have updated the Warning on its 25th anniversary in a remarkable fashion. “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice” was published last month in BioScience, a well-known journal. Although eight authors appear on the title page, the total number of signatories is huge—15,364 scientists from 184 countries! It is not too late to join this elite crew if, indeed, you are a scientist. Go to http://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu to find out more and to endorse the article. Over 3,000 people have already added their names.

The current Warning is not optimistic. Of the 9 issues treated 25 years ago, only one shows improvement. The good news is that ozone-depleting emissions (chlorofluorocarbons) are decreasing. They jeopardize the atmospheric ozone that guards us against dangerous ultraviolet radiation. The other 8 trends are all bad; these include fresh water supplies, total forest area, vertebrate species abundance and ocean dead zones. Need I also mention that the CO2 level is rising and the climate is heating up?

It comes down to two factors—population and consumption. The authors put it this way: “We are jeopardizing our future by not reining in our intense… material consumption and by not perceiving continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats.”

Slowing population growth seems much more attainable than decreasing consumption, however. So many people want to manage their fertility but don’t have access to effective contraception—we must expand access to birth control here and abroad.

There is hope. The new Warning points out that pressure on politicians, especially from scientists and concerned citizens, can create change. The authors also cite the importance of changing individual behaviors such as choosing to have small families and to consume less—including moving toward a plant-based diet. They celebrate the decrease in family size throughout most of the world and praise the decrease in world hunger. They use the example of the decrease in chlorofluorocarbons as an example of what can be done when there is political will.

The Warning gives 13 steps to take in order to move in the correct direction to save our life support systems. The 12th is to revise our economy to reduce inequality of wealth and to take into account the externalities that harm our planet. The last proposes a revolutionary idea—to determine what a long-term sustainable human population might be, then to rally support to reach that goal.

Can more than 18,000 scientists make a difference in a positive direction? We have seen how much damage one person, the president of the USA, can do by moving us away from sustainability. It is time for us to heed the far-sighted Warning for our progeny’s sake.

© Richard Grossman MD, 2017