Katharine Hayhoe: 'A Thermometer Is Not Liberal Or Conservative'

The Guardian - Jonathan Watts

The award-winning atmospheric scientist on the urgency of the climate crisis and why people are her biggest hope

Katharine Hayhoe: ‘Fear is a short-term spur to action, but to make changes over the long term, we must have hope.’ Photograph: Randal Ford 

Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. She has contributed to more than 125 scientific papers and won numerous prizes for her science communication work. In 2018 she was a contributor to the US National Climate Assessment and was awarded the Stephen H Schneider award for outstanding climate science communication.

Interview

In 2018, we have seen forest fires in the Arctic circle; record high temperatures in parts of Australia, Africa and the US; floods in India; and devastating droughts in South Africa and Argentina. Is this a turning point?
This year has hit home how climate change loads the dice against us by taking naturally occurring weather events and amplifying them. We now have attribution studies that show how much more likely or stronger extreme weather events have become as a result of human emissions. For example, wildfires in the western US now burn nearly twice the area they would without climate change, and almost 40% more rain fell during Hurricane Harvey than would have otherwise. So we are really feeling the impacts and know how much humanity is responsible.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its 1.5C report in October. A month later, the US federal government’s climate assessment – to which you contributed – came out. How did these two massive studies move our understanding along? 
These assessments are important because there is a Schrödinger’s Cat element to studying climate impacts. The act of observing affects the outcome. If people aren’t aware of what is happening, why would anyone change? Assessments like these provide us with a vision of the future if we continue on our current pathway, and by doing so they address the most widespread and dangerous myth that the largest number of us have bought into: not that the science isn’t real, but rather that climate change doesn’t matter to me personally.

Compared to past studies, how much media attention did these reports receive?
There was significant coverage but a lot of media survive by generating controversy so they bring on opposing voices rather than explaining the scientific facts. Climate change shouldn’t be fodder for commentators who represent the interests of the fossil fuel industry by muddying the science. As a human and a scientist, this focus on controversy is frustrating. A thermometer is not liberal or conservative.

Fossil fuels have brought us many benefits ... but the solution to our current crisis is to stop using them. That is scary

Are there any signs that public opinion is shifting in the US and elsewhere?
We haven’t yet reached the tipping point to motivate sufficient action. But there has been a change. Ten years ago, few people felt personally affected by climate change. It seemed very distant. Today, most people can point to a specific way climate affects their daily lives. This is important because the three key steps to action are accepting that climate change is real, recognising it affects us, and being motivated to do something to fix it. Opinion polls in the US show 70% of people agree the climate is changing, but a majority still say it won’t affect them.

Trump was dismissive of these reports and has repeatedly tried to deny any link between climate change and extreme weather. What are the politics behind this denial?
It’s a vicious cycle. The more doom-filled reports the scientists release, the stronger the pushback from politicians whose power, ideology and funding depends on maintaining the status quo, and who are supported by those who fear the solutions to climate change more than they fear its impacts. Opposition to climate change is a symptom of a society that is politically polarised between those who cling to the past and those who recognise the need for a better future. Fossil fuels have brought us many benefits – and I’m grateful for their contribution to my life – but the solution to our current crisis is to stop using them. That change can be scary, especially for those with most to lose financially from this shift. If you feel threatened, the instinctive reaction is to push back.

Progress of sorts was made at the UN climate talks in Poland, though many scientists say global society is not moving fast enough. What is your take?
Progress was made in Poland as the world agreed on a rule book to implement the Paris agreement. The agreement is like a global pot luck in which every nation brings something different to the party. For some it’s soil conservation, for another wind power or carbon pricing. Poland gave us an agreed common standard on how to measure these contributions. That was progress. As scientists, we are like physicians for the planet who have been monitoring its rising fever for 80 years. We know that our lifestyle, specifically our dependence on fossil fuels is the cause of a problem that is rapidly becoming serious and in some cases even dangerous. So when we see the world dragging its heels and carbon emissions continuing to grow, we become concerned, anxious, and even frustrated. We know we aren’t changing fast enough.

On current trends, if you had to give a percentage breakdown of the likelihood of the following three outcomes by 2100, what would you give: a) keeping to 1.5C; b) keeping to 2C; c) rising above 3C; and d) overshooting 4C?
I’d put my money on a gradual bend away from a higher scenario, which is where we are now, until accumulating and worsening climate disasters eventually lead to a collective “oh shit!” moment, when people finally realise climate impacts do pose a far greater threat than the solutions. At that point, I would hope the world would suddenly ramp up its carbon reduction to the scale of a Manhattan Project or a moon race and we would finally be able to make serious progress. The multitrillion-dollar question is simply when that tipping point in opinion will come, and whether it will be too late for civilisation as we know it. I hope with all my heart that we stay under 1.5C, but my cynical brain says 3C. Perhaps the reality will be somewhere between my head and my heart at 2C.

Extinction Rebellion marching with other groups through London in December last year. Photograph: Guy Bell/Rex/Shutterstock

What is the best way out of the climate crisis? What policies would make a difference?
The most important thing is to accelerate the realisation that we have to act. This means connecting the dots to show that the impacts are not distant any more: they are here and they affect our lives. It also means talking about solutions. The technology and knowledge are there. The economics already make sense. In Texas, where I live, the biggest military base, Fort Hood, switched last year to renewables because they were cheaper than natural gas. And finally, it means weaning ourselves off fossil fuels, which is challenged by the fact that the majority of the world’s richest companies have made their money from the fossil fuel economy – so the majority of the wealth and power remains in their hands.

Are there any climate engineering schemes or trials that have potential?
One solution being discussed is the idea of deliberately geoengineering the planet to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and/or cool the planet. I believe it is important to discuss and study these technologies very thoroughly, because implementing some of them, like solar radiation management [spraying particles into the air to simulate a volcanic eruption and block some of the sunlight reaching Earth], is extremely risky. It would be like giving an experimental drug to every human on the planet before it had been tested. I’m more hopeful about smaller scale, less risky geoengineering projects that suck carbon dioxide out of the air, such as those being trialled by Climeworks to turn carbon into stone or fuel: or even massive tree-planting efforts, as in Bhutan.

What’s the role of global finance? Can money managers, shareholders and multinationals exert pressure and take positive action in ways that short-termist, vote-hungry politicians seem unable to do?
Yes! In the world we live in, money speaks loudly. Thanks to the growing divestment movement, we have seen cities, universities and entire countries, in the case of Ireland, withdrawing investments from fossil fuel assets. This isn’t only happening for ethical reasons but for practical ones as well. As clean energy continues to expand, those assets could become stranded. When money talks the world listens.

Firefighters watch as flames climb a hillside in Guinda, California, July last year. Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images

What are the most positive developments you have seen in the past year in the climate field?
I’m asked what gives me hope on a daily basis, and my answer is, I don’t find hope in my science, I find it in people. Over the last few years, the number of people who want to talk about and do something about climate has increased exponentially. Then, there is the unexpected leadership of organisations such as Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, RepublicEN, the Iron and Earth group – young professionals in the oil and construction industries who want to be part of the move from fossil fuels; and the take-up of renewables even in conservative states like Texas, which now gets 20% of its energy from wind and solar power.
Finally, there’s the encouraging news such as solar being the fastest-growing power source around the world, clean energy jobs growing from India to the US, and new technology being developed every year that drops the price and increases the accessibility of fossil fuel alternatives.

This year has also seen the rise of disruptive campaigning, for example Extinction Rebellion in the UK; the student strikes led by Greta Thunberg; and direct action in the US and Canada against oil pipelines. Is there a point when scientists also have to speak out more forcefully? 
We are moving in that direction. Scientists are not just disembodied brains floating in a glass jar, we are humans who want the same thing every other human wants, a safe place to live on this planet we call home. So while our work must continue to be unbiased and objective, increasingly we are raising our voices, adding to the clear message that climate change is real and humans are responsible, the impacts are serious and we must act now, if we want to avoid the worst of them.

What are the key political moments in 2019 for climate policy in the US and the world?
International talks are important but we should be looking at subnational actors because there is a lot going on at the city and corporate level. Across the US a hundred cities have committed to going 100% clean energy. Companies like Apple have already achieved that goal. In the US there’s a new climate bill with bipartisan sponsors, which is essential for legislation to succeed long-term.

Are we likely to get any respite from climate change?
(Sighs.) Climate change is a long-term trend superimposed over natural variability. There’ll be good and bad years, just like there are for a patient with a long-term illness, but it isn’t going away. To stabilise climate change, we have to eliminate our carbon emissions. And we’re still a long way away from that.

Links

• Katharine Hayhoe: Hi. I'm a climate scientist. 
• Katharine Hayhoe Reveals Surprising Ways to Talk About Climate Change
• 1,656 pages too long? Climate report coauthor Katharine Hayhoe has 3 takeaways.
• The climate change evangelist with God on her side
• The Christian climate professor bridging the gap between science and faith

A Surge Of Climate Lawsuits Targets Human Rights, Damage From Fossil Fuels

InsideCimate News - Nicholas Kusnetz

Cities, states and the fishing industry want courts to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for global warming. Others argue government inaction violates rights.

Rhode Island in 2018 became the first state to sue the fossil fuel industry over climate change, citing the growing risks from sea level rise and extreme weather. Credit: John Greim/LightRocket via Getty Images

A climate denier is in the White House, pushing policies that will boost emissions. Congress is doing nothing to stop him. So citizens and local governments who are facing the impacts of rising seas, worsening heat waves and extreme weather are increasingly looking to the courts for help.
The past year saw a surge in new lawsuits filed against fossil fuel companies, and major developments in cases pressing governments for action in the United States and abroad. And while the plaintiffs haven't secured any substantial victories in U.S. courts, they may be scoring a different victory by drawing attention to the inaction of Congress and the Executive Branch, said Michael Gerrard, faculty director at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.
"Lawsuits, even if unsuccessful, can help shape public opinion," he said. "Mr. Scopes lost the monkey trial, but it led to a lot more awareness about the issue of teaching evolution."
In Colombia and the Netherlands, citizens won rulings in 2018 ordering their governments to cut emissions and protect forests. By framing climate change in terms of human rights, those cases and similar ones filed in the U.S. and other countries are transforming how the courts address the issue, said Patrick Parenteau, senior counsel in the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic at Vermont Law School and an informal adviser to some of the plaintiffs' lawyers.
"It's pushing the boundaries of law everywhere," he said. "Climate change is changing the law."

There are currently a couple of dozen significant lawsuits around the world that are asking courts to order actions by governments or the fossil fuel industry in response to climate change. Here's a round-up of the various approaches.

Climate Liability
What began with a handful of California cities and counties in 2017 spread across the country this past year, as New York City, Baltimore, Rhode Island and local governments in Colorado and Washington State sued fossil fuel companies.
The plaintiffs are seeking compensation to help pay the costs of protecting residents from rising seas, worsening wildfires, extreme heat and other effects of climate change. Two law firms are arguing most of these cases. They allege that energy companies knew about the dangers associated with their products, but lobbied against capping emissions anyway while sowing doubt about climate science.
In November, the West Coast's largest commercial fishing association filed a similar suit. Algal blooms tied to warming waters have led to closures of the crab fishery in recent years, and the plaintiffs are seeking compensation from the fossil fuel industry for the associated losses.

The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations sued several fossil fuel companies, seeking damages on behalf of crab fishers and local communities hurt by climate change in California and Oregon. Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Parenteau said it may be harder for energy companies to dismiss the case as a political stunt, a tack they've taken against the lawsuits filed by local governments.
"The 'industry versus industry' does put another spin on it," Parenteau said. "This is real cold dollars and sense."
The only substantive rulings have been dismissals of cases brought by San Francisco and Oakland—whose cases were joined—and New York City. The judges, both in federal district courts, wrote that it was ultimately up to Congress to regulate emissions, and that climate change, as a global issue, would be better addressed by diplomats and the Executive Branch than U.S. courts. The cities have appealed the rulings, and those appeals are some of the cases to watch this year.
Despite limited success so far, these liability lawsuits may continue to spread. At the annual international climate negotiations in Poland, the foreign minister of Vanuatu—a small island nation at risk of losing much of its territory to rising seas—said his country is forming a coalition to explore legal action against fossil fuel companies and governments that have supported them.
Gerrard also said that worsening natural disasters tied to climate change could prompt new lawsuits.
"It'll be interesting to see whether anybody brings climate claims in any of the lawsuits that will arise from the California wildfires or any of the multiple hurricanes we've been having every year," he said. "There might be claims that a company or a government agency should have anticipated these extreme events in designing or constructing buildings or other infrastructure."

Constitutional and Human Rights
The lawsuits filed against fossil fuel companies target one of the world's most powerful and lucrative industries. But a separate class of cases is seeking something much broader: They're arguing that governments have a legal obligation to protect their citizens from climate change.
A group of nearly 900 Dutch citizens and a nonprofit were among the first to make the claim, arguing that their government was failing to meet its own goals for emissions cuts and violating their rights in the process. In October, a Dutch appeals court upheld a lower court ruling ordering the government to cut emissions 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. The government said it will appeal the most recent decision, even as it works to meet the emissions goal.
In the U.S., a group of children and young adults who are suing the federal government were poised to go to trial in October in a similar case. The plaintiffs are trying to establish a Constitutional right to a stable climate and are seeking a court order that the government come up with a plan to phase out fossil fuels. Simply holding a trial would be a major victory for the children, but the Supreme Court put the trial on hold less than two weeks before the scheduled opening arguments. The case is now in the hands of appeals court judges with the Ninth Circuit, who will decide whether to allow a trial.
"This is the blockbuster for the U.S.," said Melissa Scanlan, director of the New Economy Law Center at Vermont Law School. "It's the first case in the U.S. that would recognize that there's a protected Constitutional right to a climate capable of supporting human life. We never thought we needed that before."

Twenty-one children and young adults are suing the federal government to force action on climate change. Their case had been scheduled for trial in October but is on hold while the Ninth Circuit Court considers a request by the Trump administration to throw the case out. Credit: Robin Loznak

Similar cases have been filed in a few state courts, too. All face long odds.
"There are very, very few judges that would be willing to push these climate issues in court," Parenteau said. "But all roads lead to the Supreme Court, and that's where it would die. There's no chance."
In Colombia, however, a nonprofit won a court order in April directing the government to develop a plan for protecting the nation's Amazon forest, which saw deforestation rates rise in recent years and, along with areas in neighboring countries, is one of the planet's largest stores of carbon.
Human rights cases are pending in Norway, Canada, Belgium and other countries. In the Philippines, the nation's Commission on Human Rights concluded an investigation into whether fossil fuel companies played a role in violating the rights of the country's citizens by knowingly contributing to climate change. The Commission will issue a report this year.

Securities Fraud
In October, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood capped a three-year investigation into ExxonMobil by suing the company in state court, accusing it of misrepresented the financial risks that climate change poses to its business. It may be legal to lie to the public, the case effectively argues, but not to shareholders.
The lawsuit was a significant development because, unlike most of the local and state claims, it relies on a state law that gives prosecutors great powers to go after companies for financial fraud. A New York judge set a trial date for October 2019.
It wasn't the first case to charge Exxon with securities fraud,. In 2016, a shareholder filed a class action suit against the company in a Texas federal court, saying corporate officers had made false and misleading statements about how the company was assessing climate risks, artificially inflating the company's stock price. That lawsuit cleared a hurdle in August when a federal judge denied a motion by Exxon to dismiss the case.

Tried and True Tactics Remain
As cities, states and citizens press the courts to address climate change with novel legal arguments, dozens of more conventional lawsuits continue to churn too, challenging oil pipelines and coal facilities for their greenhouse gas emissions and the Trump administration as it rolls back the nation's climate regulations.
Gerrard noted that it is these traditional legal challenges that, so far, have had a greater effect on the nation's greenhouse gas emissions. Rules limiting methane emissions by the oil and gas industry, for example, remain in place for the time being despite efforts by the Trump administration to repeal them.
Legal experts say the unconventional cases, whether cities suing oil companies, children suing the government or a state suing Exxon for fraud, may face skepticism from judges, and it's far too early to say what effect they will have.
"Lots is happening, lots of boom and bang," Parenteau said. "But the carbon keeps going up and up. There you have it."

Links

• 2018 In Climate Liability: When A Trend Became A Wave
• Big Coal And Friends On Track To Shut Down Your Climate Activism
• Children Demand Climate Change Action Through Protests And Lawsuits
• 'New Weapon': Courts Offer Hope For Driving Serious Climate Action
• Vanuatu Says It May Sue Fossil Fuel Companies And Other Countries Over Climate Change
• Fossil Fuels On Trial: Where The Major Climate Change Lawsuits Stand Today
• The Forsaken Children Strike Back: 21 Young People Sue To Save Planet
• Landmark Children’s Climate Lawsuit Hits New Roadblock
• Supreme Court Refuses To Block Young People’s Climate Lawsuit Against U.S. Government
• Senior Environment Judge Brian Preston Tips Wave Of Climate Change Litigation
• New York Sues Exxon Mobil, Saying It Deceived Shareholders On Climate Change
• These Kids And Young Adults Want Their Day In Court On Climate Change
• Dutch Court Upholds Urgenda, Says Government Must Reduce Emissions
• The Trial Of The Century
• Australian Businesses Must Do More To Disclose Climate Change Risks To Investors, ASIC Says
• At '5 Minutes To Midnight', Rights Group Calls Time On Climate Change

Worst Mass Extinction Event In Earth’s History Was Caused By Global Warming Analogous To Current Climate Crisis

Mongabay - Mike Gaworecki

Bleached branching coral (Acropora sp.) at Heron Island, Great Barrier Reef. Earth’s coral reefs have been hit by successive mass bleaching events over the past few years, one of the impacts of climate change on ocean life. Photo via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Summary The Permian period ended about 250 million years ago with the largest recorded mass extinction in Earth’s history, when a series of massive volcanic eruptions is believed to have triggered global climate change that ultimately wiped out 96 percent of marine species in an event known as the “Great Dying.” According to Justin Penn, a doctoral student at the University of Washington (UW), the Permian extinction can help us understand the impacts of climate change in our own current era. Penn led a team of researchers that combined models of ocean conditions and animal metabolism with paleoceanographic records to show that the Permian mass extinction was caused by rising ocean temperatures, which in turn forced the metabolism of marine animals to speed up. Increased metabolism meant increased need for oxygen, but the warmer waters could not hold enough oxygen to meet those needs, and ocean life was left gasping for breath.

New research by scientists at the United States’ University of Washington and Stanford University suggests that the most destructive mass extinction event in Earth’s ancient history was caused by global warming that left marine life unable to breathe.
The Permian period, the last period of the Paleozoic Era, ended about 250 million years ago with the largest recorded mass extinction in Earth’s history. Before the dinosaurs emerged during the Triassic period somewhere around 243 and 233 million years ago, a series of massive volcanic eruptions is believed to have triggered global climate change that ultimately led to the Permian extinction, which wiped out 96 percent of marine species in an event known as the “Great Dying.”
According to Justin Penn, a doctoral student at the University of Washington (UW), the Permian extinction can help us understand the impacts of climate change in our own current era. He’s the lead author of a study published in Science last month that builds off of previous research by Curtis Deutsch, a professor of oceanography at UW.
“In 2015, Curtis published a paper demonstrating that temperature and oxygen act as invisible barriers to habitat for animals in the modern ocean,” Penn told Mongabay. “We wanted to know whether this framework could be used to understand the link between ocean warming, oxygen loss, and marine ecosystems. The end-Permian mass extinction served as the perfect case study because there is clear evidence for ocean warming and oxygen loss during that time period, and the fossils recorded the response of marine biodiversity.”
Penn led a team of researchers that combined models of ocean conditions and animal metabolism with paleoceanographic records to show that the Permian mass extinction was caused by rising ocean temperatures, which in turn forced the metabolism of marine animals to speed up. Increased metabolism meant increased need for oxygen, but the warmer waters could not hold enough oxygen to meet those needs, and ocean life was left gasping for breath.
During the Permian period, Earth’s land masses were still joined together in the supercontinent of Pangaea, and before volcanic eruptions in Siberia increased the concentrations of greenhouse-gas’s in the atmosphere, ocean temperatures and oxygen levels were similar to those of today. The researchers constructed a model based on Earth’s configuration and climate in the Permian, then raised greenhouse gases in the model until ocean surface temperatures in the tropics had risen by 10 degrees Celsius (20 degrees Fahrenheit), the conditions driven by the global warming that was occurring at the time.

This illustration shows the percentage of marine animals that went extinct at the end of the Permian era by latitude, from the model (black line) and from the fossil record (blue dots). A greater percentage of marine animals survived in the tropics than at the poles. The color of the water shows the temperature change, with red being most severe warming and yellow less warming. At the top is the supercontinent Pangaea, with massive volcanic eruptions emitting carbon dioxide. The images below the line represent some of the 96 percent of marine species that died during the event. Includes fossil drawings by Ernst Haeckel/Wikimedia; Blue crab photo by Wendy Kaveney/Flickr; Atlantic cod photo by Hans-Petter Fjeld/Wikimedia; Chambered nautilus photo by ©2010 John White/CalPhotos. Image Credit: Justin Penn and Curtis Deutsch/University of Washington.

The global warming and oxygen loss simulated in the Earth System model Penn and team built matched reconstructions of these changes made from the fossil record of the end of the Permian period. The oceans lost about 80 percent of their oxygen, and around half of the ocean seafloor became completely oxygen-free, especially at lower depths.
The researchers then used published lab measurements on 61 modern marine species like crustaceans, fish, shellfish, corals, and sharks to examine how those animals might respond to those oxygen and temperature conditions. Today’s marine wildlife are expected to have similar tolerances to high temperatures and low oxygen as Permian animals because of the similar environmental conditions under which they evolved.
“Warming and oxygen loss would have led to a loss of aerobic habitat for marine animals by increasing their temperature-dependent oxygen demand amid declining supply,” Penn said. “The predicted geography and severity of the resulting mass extinction explain the patterns observed in the global marine fossil record from the ‘Great Dying.’”
In a statement, Curtis Deutsch explained that by combining species’ traits with the team’s paleoclimate simulations, the researchers were able to predict the geography of the extinction event. “Very few marine organisms stayed in the same habitats they were living in — it was either flee or perish,” Deutsch, a co-author of the Science paper, said.
The model predicted that, because animals found at high latitudes far from the tropics are the most sensitive to oxygen levels, their numbers would have suffered the most, with those that have particularly high oxygen demands being almost completely wiped out. Many tropical species would have gone extinct, as well, the model showed.
“Since tropical organisms’ metabolisms were already adapted to fairly warm, lower-oxygen conditions, they could move away from the tropics and find the same conditions somewhere else,” Deutsch said. “But if an organism was adapted for a cold, oxygen-rich environment, then those conditions ceased to exist in the shallow oceans.”

This roughly 1.5-foot slab of rock from southern China shows the Permian-Triassic boundary. The bottom section is pre-extinction limestone. The upper section is microbial limestone deposited after the extinction. Photo Credit: Jonathan Payne/Stanford University.

To test the predictions made by the climate model, study co-authors Jonathan Payne and Erik Sperling of Stanford University turned to the Paleobiology Database, a virtual archive of published fossil collections. By looking at how fossils are distributed in ancient seafloor rocks, it’s possible to piece together where animals existed before the extinction event, where they they fled to or went extinct, or where they were confined to a fraction of their previous habitat. The fossil distributions of the late-Permian period confirmed that species far from the equator were hit the hardest by the mass extinction event.
“The signature of that kill mechanism, climate warming and oxygen loss, is this geographic pattern that’s predicted by the model and then discovered in the fossils,” Penn said in a statement. “The agreement between the two indicates this mechanism of climate warming and oxygen loss was a primary cause of the extinction.”
Penn and co-authors say that other shifts in the ocean environment, such as acidification or changes in the productivity of photosynthetic organisms, probably contributed to the Permian extinction, but that warmer temperatures leading to insufficient oxygen levels accounts for more than half of the losses in marine life.
That could help us understand how marine life will fare in our current age of global warming, Penn added, because the conditions in the late Permian are similar to conditions today.
The drivers of the Permian mass extinction — volcanic CO2 emissions into the atmosphere leading to global warming — are analogous to human-caused CO2 emissions occurring today, Penn noted. “These results allow us to compare the scale of our modern problem to the largest extinction in Earth’s history,” he told Mongabay. “Under a business-as-usual emissions scenarios, by 2100 warming in the upper ocean will have approached 20 percent of warming in the late Permian, and by the year 2300 it will reach between 35 and 50 percent.”
The study, therefore, highlights the potential for a mass extinction driven by anthropogenic climate change due to mechanisms similar to those that caused the Permian mass extinction, Penn said: “The ocean cannot be cooled or oxygenated on a global scale by any feasible means. The only sustainable solution to reduce the risk of temperature-dependent hypoxia is to halt the anthropogenic accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere.”

Links

• Climate Change Also Wiped Out Life On Earth 252 Million Years Ago
• The 'Great Dying': Rapid Warming Caused Largest Extinction Event Ever, Report Says
• How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking The Planet
• Hothouse Earth: Our Planet Has Been Here Before – Here’s What It Looked Like
• What Happened Last Time It Was As Warm As It’s Going To Get Later This Century?
• Burning Coal May Have Caused Earth’s Worst Mass Extinction

The 18 Tourist Hotspots That Could Be Lost Forever Due To Climate Change

Fairfax - Penny Walker

      Tourists looking out over panorama view of old town Dubrovnik. Photo: Shutterstock

There are dozens of sites that are popular with tourists across the world that are at risk. Here are just a handful of them.

London

Photo: Shutterstock

When the Thames Barrier was first used in 1984, it was predicted that it would only be called upon two or three times a year. Today, we use it around six to seven times a year, meaning that usage has almost tripled in just 35 years. While London is fairly far inland, it doesn't sit too far from the river mouth making it sensitive to tidal fluctuations.

Venice, Italy

Photo: ALASTAIR MILLER

Probably the most obvious on the list, we already regularly see images of people using elevated planks to cross St Mark's Square in the winter months. There are genuine concerns that the city may not be around for too much longer. Venice's buildings have been sinking – albeit very slowly – into the Adriatic and rising sea levels will only make things worse.

The situation is so bad that Venice features on the World Monuments Fund (WMF) list of places under threat. According to the WMF, cruise ships are only speeding up the process: "The large cruise ships have had direct and indirect impacts on flooding."

Maldives

Inevitably, small islands are some of the most at-risk areas when it comes to rising sea levels. Throw in the fact that the Maldives is the world's lowest lying nation (on average the islands are only 1.3 meters above sea level) and you have a recipe for disaster. Should waters rise as much as three feet, it would submerge the 1,200 islands enough to make them uninhabitable.

Tropical islands
The Maldives is not alone in potentially being lost to the sea. There are plenty of islands around the world that are destined to share a similar fate. Projections include the loss of the Seychelles, low-lying islands in the Solomons and Micronesia, Kiribati – about halfway between Hawaii and Australia –the islands of the Torres Strait off the north coast of Australia, Palau in the Philippines, the Carteret Islands in the south-west Pacific Ocean and Tuvalu, as well as many more.

Magdalen Islands, Canada

Photo: Mathieu Dupuis

It's not just tropical islands that are under threat. Sitting in the Gulf of St Lawrence in Quebec, the Magdalen Islands' sandstone cliffs are susceptible to erosion. As the Earth warms, the wall of sea ice that protects the archipelago from the blustering winds and sea spray is melting rapidly. With this last line of defence gone, it is likely that the islands will erode even more quickly than their current rate of loss – a massive 40 inches a year.

The North Pole
All this water has to be coming from somewhere, and much of it is coming from the vast glaciers and icebergs of the Arctic and Antarctic. The ice caps are melting so quickly in fact that it's believed that in just a few generation's time, true magnetic north will no longer be found on a chunk of sea ice, but above water. There will be no more standing on the North Pole.

Polar bear spotting in the Arctic

Photo: AP

The melting of the ice caps is also threatening the polar bear's habitat and way of life. These strong carnivores use the ice to hunt seals and burn through a whopping 12,325 calories a day. They are completely dependent on being able hunt seals on firm ground. As the ice reduces, so do the hunting grounds, leading to increasing reports of polar bears dying of starvation.

Key West, Florida
Even before hurricane Irma hit the tailend of Florida back in 2017, Key West was having problems with the environment. Rising seas and warnings by the Army Corps of Engineers has encouraged the small city to take drastic measures. They have invested one million dollars into elevating their roads before they too become a permanent underwater attraction.

Miami, Florida

Celebrity Edge cruise ship arrives in Miami.

More than one of Florida's cities are under threat. King tides are already surging over coastal defences to send water a couple of feet high surging down Miami's streets – and the future is bleak. In fact, if the Earth's temperature rises by as much as four degrees, 93 per cent of the city's residents could find themselves displaced. Fort Lauderdale to the north and the equally popular Everglades National Park to the west are also at risk.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

The Ho Chi Minh City skyline and Saigon River. Photo: Shutterstock

Set on the Saigon River, Ho Chi Minh City is more susceptible to rising sea levels than other major tourist destinations according to research. With just a 1.5 degree increase in temperature (billed as the 'best case scenario'), the city will suffer one of the greatest sea level rises out of all the world's major cities at 3.1 metres. This could see historic landmarks flooded and 29 per cent of the population affected.

Bangladesh
Much like Venice, the plight of Bangladesh is not a new one. The country already experiences floods that cover around a quarter of its landmass every year and this only predicted to worsen with time. Citizens here are already learning to adapt their way of life to combat the change in their environment, with farmers using rafts to transfer produce and agriculture when the waters rise.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Photo: Shutterstock

The popular Brazilian city has been cited as one of the biggest losers of rising sea levels. It has been speculated that should warming continue at its current rate, the waters around the city could rise up to 32 inches by 2100. Its popular beaches could be gone, along with its airport. Fortunately, Christ the Redeemer is high enough to escape the rising tide.

Alexandria, Egypt
Once the home of the most extensive library on Earth, today it's not just the loss of knowledge that Alexandria laments, but the possibility that more of its history will be swallowed by water. The city's beaches could be submerged with as little as half a metre rise in sea levels and as many as eight million people displaced. Coastal flooding could also affect the Nile Delta and the towns and villages along its banks.

Pompeii, Italy

Photo: Shutterstock

The residents of this Italian city once faced one of the worst natural disasters in human history. Now it is under threat from the sea. Dr Lena Reimann, of the coastal risks and sea level research group at Keil recently said that: ""Pompeii is at low to moderate risk from coastal erosion and erosion risk may increase by up to 16 per cent under the high-end sea-level rise scenarios until 2100".

Ancient Mediterranean sites

Tourists at a viewpoint on Srd hill looking at Dubrovnik panorama in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Photo: Shutterstock

It's not just Pompeii that is under threat in the Mediterranean. The Patriarchal Basilica of Aquileia in Italy is also at risk as storm surges threaten the 5th Century city, much of which has not yet been excavated. Increasing water levels also threaten Herculaneum, Istanbul and Dubrovnik, as well as the kasbah at Algiers, the Medieval city of Rhodes and the archaeological site of Carthage.

Osaka, Japan

Photo: SHUTTERSTOCK

According to new data, the high risk level posed to Osaka could affect as many as 5.2 million people. Like much of the rest of the country, the city employs the use of seawalls to protect its shore. But there is only so long that this can work. The thriving Japanese city could soon be lost to the sea.

Bangkok, Thailand

Photo: Shutterstock

Asian cities really have drawn a bad hand here, with many of them likely to be significantly affected by rising sea levels. Even if the Earth warms towards the more conservative end of projections – around two degrees by 2100 – 42 per cent of this hugely popular tourist destination's inhabitants will be displaced with waters projected to rise by 4.9 metres, flooding much of Bangkok.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Houseboats in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Photo: Shutterstock

Things aren't looking good for the popular European city considering that parts of it are already four metres below sea level. While the Netherlands' capital isn't too worried just yet thanks to its series of innovative dykes and dams, research shows that should the Earth's temperature warm by four degrees, the sea level around Amsterdam could rise by a whopping 7.6 metres, potentially displacing as much as 98 per cent of the city's population.

Links

• Icons at Risk: Climate Change Threatening Australian Tourism
• Climate Change & Tourism
• Climate Change: Implications for Tourism
• Tourism is responsible for nearly one tenth of the world's carbon emissions
• Good weather or your money back: how climate change could transform tourism

How Climate Change Caused The World’s First Ever Empire To Collapse

The Conversation - Vasile Ersek

King Naram-Sin of Akkad, grandson of Sargon, leading his army to victory. Rama / Louvre, CC BY-SA

Gol-e-Zard Cave lies in the shadow of Mount Damavand, which at more than 5,000 metres dominates the landscape of northern Iran. In this cave, stalagmites and stalactites are growing slowly over millennia and preserve in them clues about past climate events. Changes in stalagmite chemistry from this cave have now linked the collapse of the Akkadian Empire to climate changes more than 4,000 years ago.
Akkadia was the world’s first empire. It was established in Mesopotamia around 4,300 years ago after its ruler, Sargon of Akkad, united a series of independent city states. Akkadian influence spanned along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers from what is now southern Iraq, through to Syria and Turkey. The north-south extent of the empire meant that it covered regions with different climates, ranging from fertile lands in the north which were highly dependent on rainfall (one of Asia’s “bread baskets”), to the irrigation-fed alluvial plains to the south.

The Akkad empire during the reign of Narâm-Sîn (2254-2218 BC). Mount Damavand is labelled in blue. Zunkir / Semhir / wiki, CC BY-SA

 It appears that the empire became increasingly dependent on the productivity of the northern lands and used the grains sourced from this region to feed the army and redistribute the food supplies to key supporters. Then, about a century after its formation, the Akkadian Empire suddenly collapsed, followed by mass migration and conflicts. The anguish of the era is perfectly captured in the ancient Curse of Akkad text, which describes a period of turmoil with water and food shortages:

… the large arable tracts yielded no grain, the inundated fields yielded no fish, the irrigated orchards yielded no syrup or wine, the thick clouds did not rain.

Drought and dust

Sargon of Akkad – or maybe his son, Naram-Sin. Iraqi Directorate General of Antiquities / wiki

The reason for this collapse is still debated by historians, archaeologists and scientists. One of the most prominent views, championed by Yale archaeologist Harvey Weiss (who built on earlier ideas by Ellsworth Huntington), is that it was caused by an abrupt onset of drought conditions which severely affected the productive northern regions of the empire.
Weiss and his colleagues discovered evidence in northern Syria that this once prosperous region was suddenly abandoned around 4,200 years ago, as indicated by a lack of pottery and other archaeological remains. Instead, the rich soils of earlier periods were replaced by large amounts of wind-blown dust and sand, suggesting the onset of drought conditions. Subsequently, marine cores from the Gulf of Oman and the Red Sea which linked the input of dust into the sea to distant sources in Mesopotamia, provided further evidence of a regional drought at the time.
Many other researchers viewed Weiss’s interpretation with scepticism, however. Some argued, for example, that the archaeological and marine evidence was not accurate enough to demonstrate a robust correlation between drought and societal change in Mesopotamia.

A new detailed climate record
Now, stalagmite data from Iran sheds new light on the controversy. In a study published in the journal PNAS, led by Oxford palaeoclimatologist Stacy Carolin, colleagues and I provide a very well dated and high resolution record of dust activity between 5,200 and 3,700 years ago. And cave dust from Iran can tell us a surprising amount about climate history elsewhere.
Gol-e-Zard Cave might be several hundred miles to the east of the former Akkadian Empire, but it is directly downwind. As a result, around 90% of the region’s dust originates in the deserts of Syria and Iraq.

Mount Damavand is a ‘potentially active’ volcano, and the highest peak in Iran. Gol-e-Zard Cave is nearby. Vasile Ersek, Author provided

That desert dust has a higher concentration of magnesium than the local limestone which forms most of Gol-e-Zard’s stalagmites (the ones which grow upwards from the cave floor). Therefore, the amount of magnesium in the Gol-e-Zard stalagmites can be used as an indicator of dustiness at the surface, with higher magnesium concentrations indicating dustier periods, and by extension drier conditions.
The stalagmites have the additional advantage that they can be dated very precisely using uranium-thorium chronology. Combining these methods, our new study provides a detailed history of dustiness in the area, and identifies two major drought periods which started 4,510 and 4,260 years ago, and lasted 110 and 290 years respectively. The latter event occurs precisely at the time of the Akkadian Empire’s collapse and provides a strong argument that climate change was at least in part responsible.
The collapse was followed by mass migration from north to south which was met with resistance by the local populations. A 180km wall – the “Repeller of the Amorites” – was even built between the Tigris and Euphrates in an effort to control immigration, not unlike some strategies proposed today. The stories of abrupt climate change in the Middle East therefore echo over millennia to the present day.

Links

• Collapse of Earliest Known Empire Is Linked to Long, Harsh Drought
• The Genesis and Collapse of Third Millennium North Mesopotamian Civilization
• The cursing of Agade: translation
• Precise timing of abrupt increase in dust activity in the Middle East coincident with 4.2 ka social change
• Contribution of the Middle Eastern dust source areas to PM10 levels in urban receptors: Case study of Tehran, Iran

How Your Brain Stops You From Taking Climate Change Seriously

PBS NewsHour - Nsikan Akpan

Local school children join Greta Thunberg's initiative on climate strike during the COP24 UN Climate Change Conference 2018 in Katowice, Poland December 14, 2018. Photo by Agencja Gazeta/Grzegorz Celejewski via REUTERS

Action on climate change has been stymied by politics, lobbying by energy companies and the natural pace of scientific research — but one of the most significant barriers is our own minds.
Think about how every town seems to have a traffic intersection that’s needlessly dangerous. No matter how many times you think to yourself, “They should really put in a stoplight here,” you don’t call the proper authorities. (You’re already late for work, and it feels like someone else’s problem to solve.)
Our mental responses to global warming and climate change follow a similar script. What needs to be done is clear enough — stop greenhouse gases from occupying the atmosphere — and yet progress moves at a snail’s pace. Three decades passed between the first report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the international community’s pledge for action through the Paris climate accords.

Part of the reason it takes us so long to act is because the human brain has spent nearly 200,000 years focused on the present.

It took another two years for these governments to decide — at the COP24 conference in Poland — on how to keep each other accountable. And keep in mind, the Paris agreement still carries no legal powers of enforcement.
Part of the reason it takes us so long to act is because the human brain has spent nearly 200,000 years focused on the present. “Find food. Make shelter. Mate!” We only began to contemplate time, and by extension the future, within the last few hundred years.
Making the future tangible is only one of the psychological barriers that have made climate change into an elusive problem that now must be tackled in the next 12 years to limit devastation.
Our minds — regardless of one’s political or socioeconomic status — are constantly looking for ways to tell ourselves that business as usual is OK. News of disappearing glaciers fails to inspire serious change because of this cognitive shield — indeed certain efforts to educate only harden partisanship on the issue.
But it’s still possible to train your brain to get over these hurdles. Here’s how.

Apathy and discounting (why news stories about polar bears don’t inspire action)
Overcoming these hurdles relies on the careful intersection of three key dimensions — almost like trying a Rubik’s Cube, said Robert Gifford, an environmental psychologist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
The first dimension centers on finding the best way to change a person’s behaviors toward the environment.
To do that, you need to tap into another dimension: a person’s demographics — how much money they make or where they live.

A polar bear outside Churchill, Manitoba, which is located on the animals’ annual migration route. Photo by Tim Auer/Polar Bears International

Finally, there are what Gifford calls “dragons of inaction” — the specific cognitive barriers that dominate someone’s view of climate change.
“The perception of not having control over the situation is certainly one of the biggest” barriers, Gifford said.
Whenever the NewsHour covers climate change, the most common responses we get from those who don’t believe that humans influence climate change point to the ice ages. They cite how the Earth has experienced natural cycles, between extreme cold and heat, for millennia.
These beliefs are known as nature-benign worldviews, because they suggest the planet is impervious to carbon pollution or any activity performed by Earth’s creatures — even it is done by billions of them, repeatedly in developed countries, for more than a century.

No one wants to believe their daily activities are responsible for a global disaster that has already turned millions of people into climate refugees and killed scores of others.

Research shows some deniers may espouse these opinions because they have a personal stake — whether it’s stock investments in fossil fuel companies or they simply enjoy a drive in their gas-powered car.
“But these people are honestly ignoring the fact that the temperature is rising at a rate beyond anything that anybody’s seen for thousands of years,” Gifford said. “It’s pretty clear that it’s not a natural cycle.”
Cognitive dissonance, the mental discomfort created by holding more than one conflicting belief at once, plays a part in these dismissals too, Gifford said.
No one wants to believe their daily activities — from switching on a light to checking your phone to washing your hair to going to work — are responsible for a global disaster that has already turned millions of people into climate refugees and killed scores of others.
So people change their minds about the issue rather than changing their habits because it’s an easier way to cope, Gifford said.
Gifford’s lab has found this cognitive tension runs alongside another barrier known as discounting, wherein people undervalue climate change because its hazards don’t feel immediate or nearby. When they surveyed 3,200 people across 18 nations, they found a majority — those from 15 countries — believed incorrectly that climate change wasn’t a local problem.
Spatial discounting helps explain why people maintain the status quo — or become more polarized — even if their news feeds are swamped by viral stories of giant icebergs breaking off Antarctica, or polar bears swimming until they drown.
If the message lacks personal or local relevance, research shows that people will be less engaged.

Ignorance (why people don’t know how to live environmentally)
Another of these “dragons of inaction” is ignorance — not in a negative sense, but rather a lack of information. People often recognize that climate change is bad but don’t know quite what to do about it in their own lives.

Washing clothes in cold water can save up to 15 pounds of carbon emissions per load.

For instance, even if many people know that the average American emits about 17 tons of carbon every year, they don’t realize half of those emissions could be eliminated with simple fixes.
“The average house has air leakage equivalent to a small window being open all year round,” said Richard Heede, co-founder and co-director of the Climate Accountability Institute. “If people can caulk these leaky areas, it would help reduce cold infiltration and lower heating bills.”
Heating and cooling account for 53 percent of household emissions, which can be cut by switching to energy-efficient appliances or brushing your teeth with cold instead of hot water.
“Lower the water heater temperature from the normal preset of 140 degrees Fahrenheit to 120,” Heede said. “That’s easy enough, and it prevents scalding by friends and visitors.”
Washing clothes in cold water can save up to 15 pounds of carbon emissions per load, depending on your washing machine and your energy supplier.
You can check your home’s carbon footprint and ways to shrink it with this tool or this one.

Awareness (why so few are driving electric cars)
Experts view the abandonment of gas-burning vehicles as essential to meeting climate goals. In 2014, nearly a quarter of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions were created by transportation, a sector that accounts for 70 percent of U.S. petroleum consumption, most of which — 99 percent — is used by cars, trucks and airplanes. In the U.S., transportation is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

How you can make a
difference with climate change

A battery charger sign for electric cars is painted on the ground of a parking ground near the soccer stadium in Wolfsburg, Germany, April 6, 2016. Photo by REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach

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Here are some steps — both tangible and psychological — you can take on your own:

• Caulk air leaks around doors and windows in your house 
• Swap out older appliances and light bulbs for more energy-efficient models 
• Brush your teeth (and wash your clothes) with cold water 
• Lower your water heater to 120 degrees Fahrenheit 
• Trade your conventional vehicle for a plug-in hybrid 
• If you want to encourage others to make changes, talk about local or personal ways it affects you and your community 
• Start thinking about your green identity, the parts of your lifestyle dedicated to climate change and its effects 
• Vote with your wallet 
• You can be a hero (just keep telling yourself that

Yet even though every major automaker produces electric or hybrid models, most lack mainstream brand recognition. Car dealerships — even in California, which leads the nation in electric cars — express an annoyance toward selling green vehicles.
Go ahead, name an electric car brand. Let me guess: You said Tesla.
Consumers in Canada and the U.S. are “aware that electric vehicles exist as a thing, but don’t understand anything beyond that,” said Jonn Axsen, who directs the Sustainable Transportation Action Research Team at Simon Fraser University. “We find this repeatedly in our in our survey work.”
When his lab examined a survey of 1,700 new car buyers in Canada, they learned only 18 percent knew of a nearby electric car charging station. A second study found a mere 22 percent reported being familiar with how plug-in cars work. Buyers said these things dissuaded them from purchasing electric vehicles.
But in what might be the biggest misconception about the transition to electric vehicles, many respondents assumed that they need abundant access to charging stations before they can invest in an electric car to help the climate, Axsen said.
That’s because most folks are confused about the difference between plug-in hybrid vehicles, which can be plugged in or use gasoline, and pure electric vehicles, Axsen said. “While niche groups of enthusiasts want to go pure electric, that’s proven to be a small share of the market.”
Once a town or community becomes aware of plug-in hybrids and how they operate, Axsen’s group found, there is far more — about 75 percent — expressed demand for that type of vehicle. Consumers can charge them at home for daily city commutes, but still go on unplanned road trips with the gasoline engine.
Contrary to concerns about how far you can drive, “your range is even longer than a conventional vehicle because you have both the battery and the inefficient gasoline engine to work with,” Axsen said.
On the long road to decarbonizing vehicles, the IPCC views hybrid vehicles as “instrumental,” given that transportation emission must drop by 15 to 30 percent in the coming decades to stop the calamity of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming.

Delusions and procrastination (why politicians are taking so long to act)
Washington, D.C., the city proper, is the definition of a liberal stronghold. The District has elected a Democrat in every mayoral race since 1961 and has never voted in favor of a Republican president in its history. The nation’s capital is also a car city, with more than 310,000 registered vehicles. That’s about 5,000 vehicles per square mile, which rivals megacities like New York (7,200); it’s three times as congested as Los Angeles (1,700).

Even after politicians become convinced that climate change matters, they set ineffective policy goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — a basic premise that scholars have noticed for decades.

Despite its liberal core, only 1 percent of new vehicles on D.C. streets were electric in 2016, a lower percentage than in Detroit and Salt Lake City. Its total fleet of electric vehicles falls outside the top-10 for U.S. cities.
So how can a government like D.C.’s, which often touts its leadership on energy efficiency, not take steps to boost the city’s supply of electric vehicles?
One of Axsen’s colleague’s at Simon Fraser University — Mark Jaggard — says it happens because policymakers are deluding themselves.
Even after politicians become convinced that climate change matters, they set ineffective policy goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — a basic premise that Axsen said other scholars have noticed for decades.
“Time after time, [lawmakers] either put in no effective policies or very few effective policies — where there is no evidence that those policies will get anywhere near their targets,” Axsen said. “It has been happening for decades, and it is everywhere.”
He cites the slow national adoption of the zero-emission vehicle mandate as the starkest example. This policy, which was first implemented in California in 1990, requires automakers to ensure that a certain number of electric vehicles are on the road.
“The beauty, at least from a public policy perspective, is that it puts the onus on automakers,” Axsen said. “When carmakers are required to make, develop, market and sell electric vehicles, then they will channel their resources into doing that,” and it has a snowball effect.

Zero-emission vehicle programs could nearly eliminate petroleum use in passenger vehicles by 2050 in the U.S., yet only nine states have followed California’s lead in 30 years. Photo by REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

It usually goes like this: Automakers begin swapping subsidies, which lower prices for consumers. These backroom deals also reduce the number of government-funded incentives — tax credits — needed to promote electric vehicle adoption. Such incentives can become prohibitively expensive for a city and its citizens as the market grows.
More money going into research and development to bring the cost down for batteries eventually means “a wider range of makes and models of electric vehicles and more marketing efforts in order to make people aware of the different vehicles,” Axsen said.
Research shows that the zero-emission vehicle programs could nearly eliminate petroleum use in passenger vehicles by 2050 in the U.S., yet only nine states have followed California’s lead in 30 years. Automakers and their lobbyists argue that the mandate places too high a burden on vehicle manufacturers. D.C.’s landmark climate bill, which would transition the city to 100 percent renewable energy, does not include a plan for reaching zero emissions from vehicles.
The political reluctance around the zero-emission vehicle mandate mirrors what happened with solar energy, which only ballooned in the last decade thanks in part to government support.
Carbon capture and storage technology, which sucks carbon dioxide out of the sky, has also faced a slow rollout.
As of 2018, there are 18 large-scale carbon capture facilities operating in the world, up from a tally of 17 the year before.
Akshat Rathi, who has thoroughly covered this issue for Quartz, reports that the world needs at least 200 of these facilities by 2025 to hit zero emissions. Meanwhile, there are 500 coal plants currently under construction worldwide, and another 1,000 planned for the near future.
Based on every climate scenario studied by the IPCC, the Earth cannot stop the coming devastation wrought by global warming without carbon capture and storage; the global dearth of carbon capture continues to threaten the Paris accords emissions targets for 2030.

Internal motivation (why you can still make a difference)
Every expert interviewed for this story said that if people want to stop this slow, collective demise by a thousand political half-steps, the best weapon is you.

Consumers have a lot of power to adjust their spending habits, what they invest then and what their concerns are. We vote with our dollars.

People tend to mold their behaviors around what they already favor. If you favor patriotism, you’ll attend parades. If you favor the outdoors, you’ll go camping or hunting.
So how we internally frame our discussions about climate change is one of the keys to motivating action, Gifford said. (Alternatively, if you give people outside incentives to do the right thing environmentally, the behavior stops pretty much when the incentive stops.)
“The goal is trying to get people to have a green identity, an intrinsic motivation instead of an extrinsic motivation,” Gifford said.
One way to shape environmental attitudes is to explain how climate change will directly affect a person’s lifestyle, such as by threatening national security or national parks, he said.
“Another messaging strategy that works across the board is not telling people that they’re going to have to sacrifice,” Gifford said. “Research shows that pro-environment messages stick best when you tell people that they can be a hero by helping others.”

Public pressure led to a $6 trillion in divestment from fossil fuels. Photo by REUTERS/Simon Dawson

Heede echoed this sentiment, pointing to massive efforts by investors toward green energy. One student-inspired campaign has pledged to divest $6 trillion from fossil fuels since 2011, and global investments in clean energy have exceeded $200 billion for the last eight years.
Heede said this investor pressure has led most oil and gas companies to pledge reductions in carbon emissions — at least with their field operations. Shell has even developed a global plan for reaching zero emissions, though it calls on increases in coal, natural gas and oil for decades.
Grassroots efforts have also spawned political pressure and movements like the Green New Deal in the House of Representatives.
“Increasingly shareholders are more activist with respect to climate,” Heede said. But you don’t have to be a millionaire to make a difference. “Consumers have a lot of power to adjust their spending habits, what they invest then and what their concerns are. We vote with our dollars.”

Links

• How a global effort could deliver solutions on climate change
• Climate change is 'most important issue we face,' UN chief says
• How climate change is changing your insurance
• ‘It’s happening, it’s now,’ says U.S. government report on climate change
• Global marches and events demand state and local leaders act on climate change