Short Reviews of Two Good Books on the Climate Crisis
Short Reviews of Two Good Books on the Climate Crisis
by John M Repp
Atmosphere of Hope: Searching for Solutions to the Climate Crisis. Tim Flannery. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. 2015.
Flannery, a scientist and writer, starts with a scientific assessment of the problem. He writes that the majority of the world’s population no longer needs graphs and charts to understand climate change. We have already experienced enough extreme and record-breaking weather to know that climate change is upon us and that it threatens us. Paraphrasing what Bernie Sanders said, “Only Republican candidates for President don’t get it!”
Flannery wrote The Weather Makers ten years ago. Millions read it. It was translated in 23 languages. One of the readers was Sir Richard Branson who was so moved by the book that he established a prize of $25 million to find ways to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere at a scale that can help save us from the catastrophe. http://www.virginearth.com/the-prize/ Flannery, along with Al Gore and James Hansen are judges for the prize. The book describes the 11 approaches that are most promising. Flannery calls them third-way solutions. Cutting emissions is number 1. Geo-engineering is number 2, (an example is shooting sulfur particles into the sky to block sunlight) and could be very dangerous, with unintended consequences. Third-way approaches are using natural processes like photosynthesis and the ability of some types of rock to absorb carbon dioxide and bringing them up to a scale where they can make a difference.
Another third-way example would be planting trees on land. But that method would have a dual effect. Carbon dioxide is captured, but the green of the tree leaves also absorbs more heat from the sun. That is why seaweed farming, one of Flannery’s favorite of the 11, is potentially so important. The seaweed is underwater so the reflection off the water of the sun’s energy still occurs. Seaweed grows very fast. The farms would help change the acidity of the oceans around the farms. We could raise fish in the seaweed. China already has hundreds of square miles of seaweed farms. Getting up to scale would be a challenge. Flannery says we would need to farm one ninth of the ocean’s surface to draw out the amount of green house gases we currently emit each year. We can scoff at the idea but 50 years ago who would have thought computers would today be such a large industry. http://climatecolab.org/plans/-/plans/contestId/1300701/planId/1307120
Most people know that even if we stopped putting all greenhouse gases into the atmosphere today, the earth would continue to heat up. There is a lag in the greenhouse effect. That is why Flannery believes we will need to develop third-way technology to deal with this crisis. He adds that the cost of these types of mitigating efforts should tell us what the price of a carbon tax would be.
Flannery sees several sources of hope in addition to the 11 third-way approaches. The growth of greenhouse gases seems to have peaked in 2014. That is just the GROWTH. We are still emitting plenty of greenhouse gases. Those advanced economies which are transitioning off of fossil fuels, even though not fast enough, are still economies that are growing, Germany is an example. Flannery says that shows that the idea that getting off fossil fuels will be bad for the economy is wrong.
Flannery also explains how changing our energy production from fossil fuel to wind and solar will be profoundly disrupting changes, like the change caused by digital photography in that industry or the change caused by the Internet in our whole economy.
The “political problem” remains. How do we pry the power to create money and invest that new money out of the hands of the big banks and hedge funds? Those institutions are investing too much in lucrative financial speculation. We the people need the funds to prevent runaway climate change. The next book can help us with the “political problem”.
What We’re Fighting for Now is Each Other: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Climate Justice. Wen Stephenson. Boston: Beacon Press. 2015.
Stephenson is a powerful writer who walked away from a successful career in mainstream journalism after understanding the true depth of the climate crisis.
He writes that we are very, very late in confronting a real existential crisis we ourselves have created. The climate crisis is upon us and the fossil fuel industry is doubling down in its efforts to survive. Fossil fuel interests are spending billions of dollars to corrupt our political system and media.
We need massive, almost unimaginable system change and our current political system offers “impossibly narrow constraints” like “farcical, gridlocked partisan debate over non-solutions” which “only distracts from any real reckoning” (p 123) We need to find a way to force the current system to wake up and respond at the scale scientists tell us we need to act.
Peace activists should know what to do. Face the crisis and feel the despair. Understand that this crisis is at its heart a “spiritual crisis”. The “dividing line” between good and evil is “within us.” “If we act in self-righteousness and anger…we tear ourselves to pieces, and we’re useless. We have to do this out of love.” (p 128.) As the title says, it is the love of our fellow human beings, especially those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, the poor, the powerless and the people of color all over the world that can motivate us.
For the book, Stephenson interviewed hundreds of activists who are using civil disobedience, like those blocking construction of tar sands pipelines all through the heart of our country. The end of the book is based on long interviews with Tim De Christopher who spent almost two years in Federal Prison for his action “disrupting” an illegal Federal auction of mineral rights for oil exploration on Federal land in Utah. Tim recently came out to the Seattle area to support the #Delta 5 in their trial. http://delta5trial.org/ The #Delta5 blocked a hundred car oil train in September 2014.
WWFOR members should know that one of the Delta 5, Jackie Minchew, first learned about climate change at the 2005 Fall Retreat focusing on Peak Oil. He talked about that retreat as his powerful wake-up call in his testimony in court.
Stephenson wants to know how these activists find the courage to do the actions they do, the courage to face jail and even death, as the tree sitters blocking pipeline construction in east Texas did. How can they sustain that level of activism? He likens this gathering movement to stop new fossil fuel infrastructure to the abolition of slavery or to the women’s suffrage movement.
In short, the force we need to deal with the political gridlock is nonviolent civil disobedience en mass, the more creative and the larger, the better.