greenhouse effect | stevegoesgreen

A review by Steve Schaefer

The year 2020 was a difficult one. But now, it’s 2021, and I’m ready to renew my commitment to ensuring a safe, healthy, and happy future for my children, grandchildren, and everyone else who will be living in the second half of the 21^st century, after I’m gone.

Clear, actionable prose helps you take action.

Reading an inspiring book is a great way to light the fire of climate action in your belly. So, I pulled The Future We Choose—Surviving the Climate Crisis off my bookshelf. Its two authors, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac have excellent climate credentials—they were the architects of the 2015 Paris Agreement. They are also cofounders of Global Optimism, an organization focused on bringing about environmental and social change.

I ordered the book last year when it came out, but for some reason, I only got through the first two parts before putting it aside. I got distracted and disturbed by the COVID-19 lockdown and six months of job searching, among other things. But with the U.S. about to re-enter the Paris Agreement under our new, climate-action-focused president, it seemed like an appropriate book to read right now. The book’s 210 pages went by fast, as the message is expertly written in clear, actionable prose.

Two Scenarios for 2050

Part 1 of the book, Two Worlds, offers a brief introduction and two views of life in 2050—one if we don’t act and one if we do. They are jarringly different scenarios, and of course, we want the second option. Chapter 1 opens the book with a brief review of the now familiar basic science of climate change. Chapter 2 presents a dystopian tale of rising temperatures and oceans, more powerful storms, mass dislocation, droughts, political unrest, and the other scary topics that Al Gore clearly laid out in his An Inconvenient Truth slideshow. Chapter 3 offers the alternative future, where we had the right vision and took action, keeping the earth a good place for people to live. In a way, it follows Mr. Gore’s slideshow’s template—education—emotion—action.

Three Mindsets for Success

In Part 2, Three Mindsets, the authors lay out three ways of thinking we need to practice in order to be good citizens of the earth and do what’s necessary to succeed. The introduction begins with a warning that we too often start “doing” before first reflecting on “being”— knowing who we are and what we personally bring to the task and what other people can do. The authors quote Gandhi, who said we want to be the change we want to see. It reminds me of ideas I heard in my college philosophy classes. It’s certainly important to be centered, grounded, and know what our goals are.

They also say that we need to make a total shift in our thinking. Part of why we’ve done so much damage to the planet is that we don’t see and feel how we are intimately connected to all of nature in everything we do, from the air we breathe to the food we eat to the materials we take from the earth and the waste we leave behind. We need to move to an attitude of connection and stewardship, away from one of exploitation and disposal.

The three mindsets are:

Stubborn Optimism
Endless Abundance
Radical Regeneration

Stubborn Optimism

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the scale and the complexity of the climate crisis, but the authors urge us to not feel helpless. By recognizing our thought patterns, we can start to transform them, and move towards optimism. Optimism, in their definition, means an intention to see beyond the immediate horizon, have comfort in the uncertainty of the outcome, and make a commitment to keeping this mindset.

We want to focus on positive thoughts, while also clearly seeing the real issues, remembering that another future is possible, but not promised. We can use the power of hope to create a new reality.

“Optimism is about having steadfast confidence in our ability to solve big challenges. It is about making the choice to tenaciously work to make the current reality better.”

Endless Abundance

Picturing the world as a zero-sum game gives us a perception of scarcity, even when there isn’t any. This leads to competition and self-centeredness, which historically has been very damaging to the planet. However, with a rapidly expanding population and reduced resources, the earth is now approaching actual scarcity, so collaboration is now our only option.

“The practice of abundance starts by shifting our minds away from perceived scarcity to what we can collectively make abundant.”

Radical Regeneration

Regeneration here means two things. In one sense, our planet can no longer support one-directional growth, with continued extraction without restoration. One example of a solution is rewilding, where areas of the planet are allowed to return to their natural state. The other meaning of regeneration applies to us. The authors suggest meditation and mindfulness to stay personally grounded through the challenges of climate action. Also, time spent in the natural world is restorative, especially with so many of us inside suffering from “nature deficit disorder.”

Ten Actions to Take

In Part 3 Figueres and Rivett-Carnac lay out ten actions we all should take. They believe that while having the right mindset is crucial to success, we have to manifest it in our actions as well. It’s also important to reject the cycle of blame and retribution we get when looking at the past and embrace the shared endeavor while “transforming our priorities to an everyone-everywhere mission.”

“The time for doing what we can is past. Each of us must now do what’s necessary.”

Here are the ten actions.

Action 1: Let Go of the Old World

Fossil fuels have built our society, and brought a lot of people out of poverty, but it’s time to move on. We have to avoid nostalgia for the good old days and focus on where we’re going, not where we’ve been. It’s time to challenge our assumptions.

Action 2: Face Your Grief but Hold a Vision of the Future

With an uncertain future, we need to muster as much courage as we can. We need a vision, not simply goals, while keeping our eyes on what’s to come. It helps to believe that the world is worth saving and that a regenerative future is possible.

Action 3: Defend the Truth

In the internet age, there is plenty of disinformation and lies out there. We have to beware of “confirmation bias,” where we see truth in things that reinforce our existing beliefs. We should verify sources and learn to distinguish between real science and pseudoscience. We can make a positive impact by interacting with and listening to climate deniers to learn where they are coming from and find ways to communicate with them.

Action 4: See Yourself as a Citizen, not a Consumer

It’s crucial to resist the rampant and unsustainable consumerism of today, where “the good life” means constantly consuming new things. When you do buy things, be a good consumer and support companies that make their products sustainably. Even better, work to dematerialize.

Action 5: Move Beyond Fossil Fuels

This is a favorite of mine, as an EV advocate. Beyond moving to electric cars, the authors suggest making an energy audit of your home and systematically reducing your carbon footprint. And we can all demand 100 percent renewable energy from our utilities. We need to make the transition in a planned and measured way to keep the economy intact, but we must do it now.

Action 6: Reforest the Earth

Trees are natural, non-tech CO₂ absorbers, and they are cheap and safe. By letting nature flourish we can undo a lot of damage. Trees help cool cities, too, where temperatures are already heading upward. Scary: 80 percent of the deforestation of the rainforest in Brazil is for raising beef cattle. Going to a more plant-based diet has a big impact. We can boycott products from companies that are contributing to deforestation.

Action 7: Invest in a Clean Economy

We need to move more in harmony with nature, repurpose used resources, and minimize waste. The book proposes moving away from using the GDP as a measurement of success—it’s based on extract, use, and discard. Places like Costa Rica and New Zealand are moving away from this model.

“We need to reorient our underlying sense of value toward quality of life.”

Action 8: Use Technology Responsibly

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a powerful tool and has exponential potential if deployed and governed well. It’s important, however, to apply the technology to a society that’s already moving in the right direction. Using AI to extract coal faster obviously isn’t the way. Redesigning energy grids and preventing methane leaks from pipes are good uses of technology. Find out what your government and local community are doing.

Action 9: Build Gender Equality

It turns out that women are better leaders during a crisis. They are more open and sensitive to a wider range of views and are better collaborators. Opening up educational opportunities to women worldwide leads to smaller, healthier families, which is crucial for limiting a growing world population. Project Drawdown has made this point clearly, as well. We need all the deep listening, empathy and collective wisdom we can get.

Action 10: Engage in Politics

We need stable political systems to be responsible to the planet’s changing needs and citizens’ evolving desires. Sadly, corporate interests have captured our democracies. Although climate change action is a higher priority for more people now, it needs to become the top priority. Peaceful civil resistance and civil disobedience are the moral choice and historically have proven to be very effective. It only takes a small number of people (3.5% of the population, according to the authors) to move change in a society.

The Conclusion

The book winds down by making two points, and then proposing an action plan. The points are:

We still have a choice—and every action matters
We can make the right choices about our own destiny

The action plan is a checklist called, “What You Can Do Now.” It proposes actions for right now and far into the future:

right now
today or tomorrow
this week
this month
this year
by 2030
by 2050

Thinking about these categories and planning what you will do helps you understand that your actions today matter, and that you need to be thinking long term, too. By 2050, those of us who are still around will know if our actions were successful.

Next: I’m going to fill in my What You Can Do checklist.

Figueres, Christiana and Rivett-Carnac, Tom. The Future We Choose—Surviving the Climate Crisis. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2020.

Climate Reality Leadership Corps Training

Yesterday, I became a Climate Reality Leader when I completed three days of training in Los Angeles. Now, I am committed to doing everything I can to fight global warming and the climate change it brings, as a writer, environmental activist, and a grandparent.

Here is the mission of The Climate Reality Project:

“Our mission is to catalyze a global solution to the climate crisis by making urgent action a necessity across every level of society.”

The Climate Reality event I attended was the 39^th training led by former Vice President Al Gore, who has spent 40 years studying, writing about, and advocating for this topic. This training was by far the largest, with 2,200 people in the energy-efficient Los Angeles Convention Center. The first one, in 2006 in Mr. Gore’s barn in Tennessee, trained 50.

Over the three days, we covered many areas. We heard from distinguished scientific experts, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, community justice advocates, policy makers, and experts in how to present this crucial message. Amanda Gorman, the 20-year-old Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, read her poem. One young woman described her difficult life living next door to an oil well.

Numerous panels discussed the various aspects of the crisis and the many solutions that are already in process. I met and spoke with dozens of people. And throughout the three days, Vice President Gore was present, usually on stage, guiding the program.

Vice President Gore gave a special two-hour version of his famous climate presentation early on, and near the end, showed us his compact 14-minute one. That’s the one we will start with ourselves. The message, regardless of length, is compelling, and I will share the essence of it below.

I originally created stevegoesgreen.com to tell about my personal experience of electric vehicles. Now, it will expand to talk about a wider range of environmental and sustainability issues, but will focus on:

Replacing gasoline vehicles with EVs
Moving from carbon-based energy generation (coal, natural gas) to clean power (solar, wind, hydroelectric, etc.)

We can create a new, better way of life, while keeping our economy strong. In 2016, solar energy employed more than 373,000 Americans and wind energy more than 101,000. Only the coal and oil companies will be unhappy about the move to renewable resources.

Here’s the Problem

The basic science behind global warming is simple, but the processes are very complex and interconnected.

We may look up and think the atmosphere goes a long way out into space, but it’s actually a thin shell. And we are dumping 110 million tons of manmade global warming pollution into it every day.

Energy comes from the sun to the earth as light, which warms it. Much of the energy bounces back into space, but some remains. This is the well-known greenhouse effect, which you can experience for yourself if you sit in a car with the windows up on a summer day.

Our atmosphere has done a great job of keeping conditions right for us, but the added pollution, particularly carbon dioxide (CO²), has thickened it, so now, more heat remains, warming the planet.

There are many sources of global warming pollution, but the largest is from burning fossil fuels for power generation and in vehicles. There’s been a huge spike in emissions since World War II, and that has caused the surface temperature of the earth to gradually rise. Sixteen of the hottest 17 years ever recorded have occurred since 2001.

The oceans are warming, too. Warmer air holds more water vapor, leading to stronger storms. When the land can’t absorb the additional rainfall fast enough, it leads to floods. Extreme rain storms have become more common since the 1950s. And the disruption of the established patterns and flows on the earth leaves some areas with more rain and some with much less.

An additional problem is that as the ocean absorbs the extra CO², it becomes more acidic, creating problems for shellfish and bleaching coral reefs. It can affect the flow of ocean currents and the lives of fish, too.

The added trapped heat dries out the land, leading to higher fire danger. The fire season in the Western U.S. is 100 days longer than it was in the 1970s. It sure has been awful this year in California.

Another issue is that with higher surface temperatures, glaciers start to melt and contribute to a rise in the oceans. This can flood coastal cities—and it’s already starting. Low-lying Miami is a mess, with flooding even on sunny days.

All of these disruptions can lead to the spread of pandemic diseases, as tropical insects move north, and create water and food shortages. Animal habitats change, and species can become extinct. And beyond all that, as floods and drought displace people, migrations can cause serious refugee crises.

We must change, but what can we do? There is great progress in renewable energy. Wind and solar energy have become dramatically cheaper and capacity has grown exponentially. Countries like Chile have made huge advances. It’s cheaper now to use renewable energy, so why not?

There’s more than enough sun and wind to power everything, and battery storage is being developed to hold electricity generated when the sun is shining, or the wind is blowing for use when they’re not. Battery tech improvements are essential for EV progress, too.

In the next few years, there will be many more choices of EVs, and prices will go down as batteries get cheaper. Range and charging speed and convenience will go up. Soon, it won’t make sense to drive a gas car.

The ideal situation is to have 100% renewable energy powering an EV fleet.

There’s so much more to deal with, including other global warming pollution such as methane, and the cutting down of rainforests (which reduces the earth’s ability to absorb the CO²), but there are solutions. We need to act on them quickly.

So, we can change. We need to muster the political and social will to do it. And it starts with understanding the problem, feeling the urgency, and taking action. Then we will change.

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Category Archives: greenhouse effect

The Future We Choose – Surviving the Climate Crisis

A Dose of Climate Reality