The Threat of Climate Change
How our fossil fuel consumption will adversely affect our planet — and what we can do to stop it.
I’ve always been intrigued by satellite views of our planet at night. It’s a sobering window into how mankind has changed what our planet looks like, even from hundreds of miles away.
One of the coolest parts of looking at these images is pointing out which clusters of light correspond to which cities.
For instance, in the night view of the Midwest below, the circled bulge of light is Chicago.
How about that city in the direct center of the image?
You guessed it: Minneapolis.
Pretty cool, right?
Wait — hold on. What’s this?
It’s not Fargo. It’s not Winnipeg. And it’s not Bismarck either. So, what city could it possibly be?
I’ll give you a hint: this megacity-sized cluster of light isn’t a city at all. It’s the Bakken Oil Fields of North Dakota.
The Bakken Oil Fields produce 660,000 barrels of oil per day, primarily through fracking.
The process of extracting tight oil through fracking results in a massive release of natural gas, about 29% of which is burned on site. Hence, from a satellite view at night, this sparsely populated swath of North Dakota land appears to be packed with bustling metropolises, when it’s really just burnt natural gas.
These night lights in North Dakota may look pretty from above, but they highlight what may easily turn out to be the biggest challenge we will face in the 21st Century: climate change.
Global warming may very well be the most dire and important tale of our time. So let’s talk about it.
Climate Change Is More Dangerous Than You Think
It’s common for people to weigh climate change as one of many equally-important factors for our government to prioritize — a mere subset of the global economy.
But in the coming years, climate change will not just be a mere pawn in the grand chessboard of politics — it will be the bishop, the knight, the rook, and the queen.
Climate change is a much bigger issue than you may realize. Here are nine reasons why:
1) Death Toll.
Hardly ever will you hear the mainstream media mention this devastating fact: already — as we speak — climate change is killing around 400,000 people every single year. That’s a death rate of over a thousand people a day.
2) Economic Effects.
A 2017 study found that climate change and air pollution from fossil fuel consumption are directly responsible for a loss of $240 billion every year to the United States economy alone. Some researchers even project that global GDP per capita in 2100 will be tens of trillions of dollars lower than it otherwise would be if there weren’t climate change.
Addressing climate change isn’t just a humanitarian pursuit — it’s an economic necessity.
3) Climate Refugee Crises.
Compounding the economic harm of climate change is the accelerating number of refugee crises that higher temperatures will spark.
In Bangladesh, rising seas are set to permanently displace over 18 million Bangladeshis from their homelands by 2050, an exodus that analysts are referring to as “a migration the size of which the world has never before seen.”
These millions of climate refugees will flock primarily into Dhaka, which is already one of the world’s most impoverished and overcrowded megacities — a deadly prescription for mass poverty and urban chaos.
Just as dire is the situation that will be faced by those living in the Middle East and North Africa. The region — which is home to over 300 million people — is set to become literally uninhabitable in the coming decades, with temperatures so hot that “the very existence of its inhabitants is in jeopardy.”
The West has already demonstrated that it is unprepared to deal with refugee crises of a few million people. Imagine what will happen when the number of those seeking asylum skyrockets to the tens or even hundreds of millions.
4) Water Shortage.
We already live in a world where one billion people lack access to potable water. The epicenter of this crisis is in Yemen, where a devastating drought has led to over one million cases of cholera and over 2,000 deaths, something the U.N. said is likely “the world’s worst humanitarian disaster for 50 years.”
South Africa is also dealing with a potentially deadly epidemic of water shortage. Cape Town, a city of over three million people, is preparing to literally run out of water on July 9 of this year — an apocalyptic event that is already being referred to as “Day Zero.” If water becomes inaccessible for less affluent residents of the city, dehydration and death could ensue.
But if you thought that was bad, it might get even worse in the coming years. By 2050, water demand worldwide is projected to rise by 55%. Meanwhile, reserves of freshwater are quickly drying up.
While not every corner of the world would be affected by this disparity between water supply and water demand, it’s not hard to foresee the misery and chaos that this would spark in certain areas.
5) Food Shortage.
By 2050, it is expected that food demand will increase by over 50%. At the same time, due to the desertification and aridification of the world’s land, experts project that our global food supply will decrease by 2% every ten years.
This means that, for food supply to keep up with food demand, we’d need to increase our agricultural yield-per-acre by over 50% by 2050. While it’s true that genetic modification and improved agricultural efficiency have promising outlooks, increasing yield by 50% in such a short period of time seems to be a quite difficult task, especially since failure to succeed could mean widespread hunger and even a spike in death rates in developing nations.
Many people don’t seem to understand how serious this actually might be. I’m not talking about a yearlong famine in a small geographic region. I’m talking about potentially not having enough food for billions of people for an extended period of time.
You’d think that the potential for billions of additional people to be unable to put food on the table — and the death, starvation, collapsed economies, and failed states such a phenomenon would produce — would be covered nonstop by the media. But worryingly, what may be the most devastating humanitarian crisis of the 21st century is last thing from any of our minds.
6) Threats to National Security.
The aforementioned risk of food shortages won’t only result in death and economic chaos — it may also lead to violence. Some analysts are even projecting that the next world war will be fought over food.
Water may also spark threats to national security. As the global water supply dwindles and water demand accelerates, wars over water are set to break out across the Middle East as the region becomes hotter and drier.
This isn’t based on speculation — almost every time that severe water shortages occur, violent conflicts break out. Remember the Yemeni water crisis I mentioned earlier? According to a 2016 study, the water crisis in Yemen causes 4,000 people to die every year due to “violent disputes over water rights.”
Cape Town is facing a similar predicament. The water shortage there has led to the rise of criminal gangs that are stockpiling tanks of water to sell at high prices once Day Zero hits.
7) Extinction.
Largely as a result of climate change, we are already experiencing the early stages of our planet’s sixth mass extinction, devastating the fine-tuned symbiosis of our planet’s biodiversity.
In addition to disrupting natural ecosystems, mass extinction will also threaten humans. If several major keystone species like bees, turtles, and coral go extinct, it could trigger a runaway ecological collapse, in which the extinction of these species could lead to the extinction of many other species, a chain reaction that could trickle up to mankind in the long term.
Partially as a result of this phenomenon, a recent study ominously found there to be a 5% chance that climate change will be “catastrophic” or “existential” to human survival by the end of the century.
8) Ocean Acidification.
One of the most underreported and catastrophic effects of our fossil fuel emissions is ocean acidification. While about half of the carbon dioxide we emit is captured in the atmosphere, another 26% of it goes directly into the seas.
This makes our oceans anoxic, depletes the oxygen of our planet, destroys coral reefs, and dissolves the shells and skeletons that are integral to the survival of fish, stifling the global fishing economy and destroying oceanic ecosystems.
9) Positive Feedback Loops.
If you thought those first eight points were bad, here’s most terrifying part of them all: climate change positive feedback loops will make all of these problems significantly worse.
One of the most significant climate change positive feedback loops is something called a “decreased albedo effect.” As more ice melts, there will be less reflection of the sun’s heat energy back into the atmosphere. This allows our oceans to absorb more heat, igniting rises in global temperature.
Melting ice may also release large amounts of methane when the clathrates in permafrost and “fire ice” thaw. If too much methane from these clathrates is released, it could rapidly enhance the greenhouse effect, a phenomenon that some scientists project could even lead us to a “point of no return.”
Other climate change positive feedback loops include increased fires, increased desertification, warmer soils, reductions in ocean circulation, and increased water vapor in the atmosphere. Each of these have the potential to greatly amplify the greenhouse effect.
In the end, it’s quite possible that positive feedback loops will make climate change a lot worse than most people are currently realizing.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
Climate change is not just one of many priorities. It may very well be the defining issue of our time.
Renewable Energy and its Obstacles
The solution to climate change is pretty clear: we need to significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and we need to do it fast.
The “magic number” cited by most scientists as a comprehensive, attainable goal is staying below a 2 degrees Celsius rise in temperatures from pre-industrial times. To stay below the 2 degree mark, most organizations — including the European Commission, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Obama Administration — agree that our best shot is an 80% reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
So, the big question is this: how do we get there? How do we reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050?
Clearly, renewable energy will play a dominant role in reducing emissions. But while there are many people who allege that renewable energy can solve our entire climate crisis — that it will single-handedly allow us to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 —such a statement ignores major technological and economic hurdles to renewable energy.
In the following paragraphs, I will outline the flaws in the pervasive narrative that renewable energy can solve all of global climate change, and demonstrate that, while renewables will be a major force in combatting climate change, they are no be-all and end-all solution.
I’ll do so by explaining two of the biggest hurdles to the widespread implementation of renewable energy: electrification and cost.
Hurdle #1 — Electrification
As of now, renewable energy is only reliable at producing electricity. This presents a major obstacle to combatting emissions with renewables, as the majority of global emissions don’t stem directly from electricity.
This means that, for renewable energy to be a comprehensive replacement for greenhouse gas emissions, the products and processes that emit these gases will need to be powered by electricity.
When it comes to trains, this is pretty simple: trains powered by electricity are already very cost-efficient and successful. But when you consider things like steel, cement, plastic, petrochemicals, heating, cooling, agriculture, deforestation, and shipping (all of which create large amounts of emissions), powering them with electricity gets a lot more complex — if not downright impossible.
In general, our global greenhouse gas emissions can be broken down into four categories:
Category One, of course, is home to everything currently powered by electricity. This includes electricity used in our homes, factories, and workplaces. This category also includes electric high speed rail, which is increasingly cost-effective and often just as cheap as fossil fuel-powered rail.
Category Two represents sectors that can be powered electrically, but not yet affordably. This includes cargo ships (which are feasibly possible to make electric, but at an excessively high price) and freight trains (which would cost over a trillion dollars to convert to electricity).
This category also includes motorized vehicles. While electric cars like Tesla’s Model 3 and electric trucks like Tesla’s Semi have shown immense potential and promise, the world’s cheapest electric car still costs $23,800, a figure unaffordable to the working class of the world.
Another essential sector in this category is heating and cooling, methods of climate control that are essential to our modern day lifestyles. While the technology for electric heating and cooling is there, it comes at over twice the cost.
The third category represents processes that cannot currently be replaced by electricity whatsoever, regardless of cost, as the technology simply isn’t there.
Plane travel, for instance, is possible to electrify on small scales, but creating an electric 747 appears to be technologically infeasible, at least for now. Another major product in which we are fossil fuel-dependent is the petrochemical industry, which produces plastics, lubricants, and gels through heavily oil-intensive processes.
This category also includes two of the most important materials in global infrastructure: cement and steel. Steel production requires the use of blast furnaces and cement production necessitates the use of kilns, each of which require heavy fossil fuel inputs and have no promising electric alternatives.
And finally, the fourth category is perhaps the most daunting: areas where it is literally impossible to use green electricity to eliminate carbon emissions, simply because the emissions don’t stem explicitly from energy use.
This includes enteric fermentation, which is the methane-emitting digestion process of cattle, rice cultivation, whose emissions stem from microbes on flooded rice paddies, and landfills, which emit greenhouse gases when methane-emitting bacteria decompose the waste.
This category also includes wastewater treatment, which uses biological processes that release a slew of greenhouse gases, and — this is a huge one — deforestation, which emits greenhouse gases by releasing the carbon stored in trees and weakening the sequestration power of carbon sinks.
In sum, our greenhouse gas emissions can be categorized as follows:
Now, the data on how much of our global greenhouse gas emissions can be accounted for by each of these sectors is incomplete. The only comprehensive study I could find categorizing each of these sectors comes from 2005.
But using that data and some back-of-the-envelope calculations, we can get some rough estimates for what percentage of emissions come from each category:
WORLD GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS BY CATEGORY
- Category one (can be affordably powered by electricity): 25%
- Category two (can be powered by electricity, but not yet affordably): 22%
- Category three (cannot yet be powered by electricity): 25%
- Category four (can never be powered by electricity): 28%
Now, of course, these calculations are not perfect and shouldn’t be taken as such. But, in general, we can assume that somewhere in the general realm of one quarter of global emissions can be attributed to each of the four categories.
The ramifications of this cannot be overstated. These findings indicate that swapping fossil fuels with renewable energy isn’t as simple as just plugging a machine into a different power source. In many cases, it requires a complete overhaul of manufacturing and production processes.
Even if we hypothetically live in a perfect world with an infinite supply of cheap, constantly-accessible renewable electricity, we would only be able to quickly eliminate a quarter of our greenhouse gas emissions (Category One) through the use of renewable energy.
Another quarter of our emissions could be eliminated over time by replacing fossil fuel-dependent technologies with electric ones (Category Two), but this would (a) take a long time, (b) require more economic turbulence, and (c) have no guarantee whatsoever to be cost-effective.
For the next 25% of emissions (Category Three), we would have to invent completely new technologies to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. While there may be some promise here, it would be naive to assume that we’ll somehow find a way to produce planes, cement, steel, and petrochemicals without the combustion of fossil fuels, as the technicalities of their production and operation all but require oil.
But perhaps the most disconcerting part is the final quarter of emissions (Category Four). Here, there is nothing renewable energy can do to solve the problem, simply because the sources of the emissions— deforestation, enteric fermentation, etc. — are not things you can solve by merely swapping the energy input.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
Renewable energy has a lot of potential. But will it single-handedly allow us to drop our emissions by 80% by 2050? The answer is clearly no.
But electrification isn’t the only hurdle to the widespread implementation of renewable energy. There’s another obstacle that’s just as serious: cost.
Hurdle #2 — The Cost of Renewables
Many people project that within the next few years, renewable energy (especially solar) will become so cheap that it will naturally supersede fossil fuels with little economic turbulence. The invisible hand will naturally pave the way for renewables, they say.
From a bird’s eye view, they appear to be right. Right now, the raw prices of solar energy can be as cheap as natural gas and coal (depending on the location), and as a result of Swanson’s Law, the price of solar-generated electricity is dropping by 50% every single decade.
However, there is a huge road block standing in the way: intermittency.
Power a house with solar energy at 2 p.m. on a sunny day? Easy. Power a house with solar energy at midnight? Not so much.
The same is true for wind. Powering a factory with wind is impossible when the wind isn’t blowing.
We all want to be able to bake cookies at 9 p.m., charge our laptops overnight, and take showers before the sun has hit full strength. Each of these services require energy storage — in this case, batteries.
Unfortunately, solar batteries make the price of solar energy skyrocket. According to my back-of-the-envelope calculations (which can be found here), it currently costs about $790 per year to install solar panels alone. But when you include the cost of solar batteries, this figure soars to $1,910 per year.
An analysis by the financial firm Lazard got even more extreme results, finding that solar prices can be as much as five times higher when battery costs are factored in.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
If we want 24/7, dependable solar energy every day of the year, batteries will be essential. The high prices of these batteries mean it will take much longer than a few years to achieve grid parity on a continuous scale.
Climate Change: A More Holistic Solution
Don’t get me wrong — although developing renewable energy alone is not the entire solution to climate change by any means, it may still be the biggest thing we can do to solve it.
Renewable energy alone will not be enough to cut 80% of global emissions by 2050. But it can get us close. So, the question becomes this: what can we do to ramp up our development of renewable technologies?
INDIVIDUAL ACTIONS
Many would argue that individual actions like biking to work, going vegan, and purchasing eco-friendly products are the keys to solving climate change.
But while these efforts certainly contribute to the cause, individual actions are much weaker leverage points than systemic change. This is largely because it would be incredibly difficult for impoverished and under-resourced populations to make expensive lifestyle changes when they’re already struggling to put food on the table.
Furthermore, studies show that 63% of global emissions come from a pool of 90 large corporations. It would make much more sense to regulate these corporations instead, as they have significantly more economic wherewithal to adapt to carbon regulations — something called the “polluter pays principle.”
MARKET-BASED SOLUTIONS
Many pundits and economists argue that we need to pursue “economically sensible”, market-based solutions like cap-and-trade and the Carbon Tax, and the invisible hand of the economy will naturally solve our climate problems.
These figures espousing market-based solutions to our climate crisis include Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Al Gore — and yes — Bernie Sanders.
I think a Carbon Tax would be really effective in many ways, and it would certainly decrease demand for carbon-intensive products. But while we should definitely consider it, we cannot let ourselves be fooled into viewing it as an all-encompassing solution.
A 2013 study, for instance, found that a Carbon Tax that started at $20 per metric ton and increased by 4% every year would only reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by about 20%. While this is surely a massive improvement, much more clearly needs to be done.
A GREEN NEW DEAL
A much more comprehensive solution than the Carbon Tax would be a “Green New Deal”—hiring millions of Americans to construct renewable energy to power the grid of the United States, as well as investing in green energy for developing countries which would have trouble affording it themselves.
Of course, the high battery costs for renewable energy would mean that it would require billions or even trillions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize the energy down to a competitive price, at least in the short term. But it’s a fiscal sacrifice we must be willing to make.
PHASING OUT CARBON
Perhaps the most comprehensive solution to climate change is one that hardly anybody is talking about: a mandated phasing out of carbon.
Under such a system, large corporations would be forced to reduce their carbon output by a certain percentage every year, and would otherwise face penalties. This would pressure high-emitting companies to adapt by reducing emissions and developing greener technologies, and send those who fail to adapt out of business. Unlike the Carbon Tax or solar subsidies, such a phase out would be guaranteed, controlled, and non-negotiable.
This type of plan is tried and tested. Under the Clean Air Act, we enforced a 100% phase-out of certain ozone-depleting substances. We also banned DDT in 1972 and banned leaded gasoline in 1990.
We could pursue a similar strategy for greenhouse gases. Of course, this would be implemented differently depending on the sector—a full ban of gas cars, for instance, but a milder, longer-term carbon cap on the production of cement and steel, which are significantly harder to produce without fossil fuels.
Such carbon bans are already in place in different countries around the world, including Norway, India, France, and the United Kingdom, which have already banned the sale of gas cars, with full electrification being governmentally mandated by years ranging from 2025 to 2040. Perhaps we should follow in their footsteps.
Further Solutions
Of course, these policies to replace fossil fuel usage with renewable energy won’t be enough. A diverse variety of other strategies will be required to minimize the impact of climate change.
REDUCE ANIMAL PRODUCT CONSUMPTION
As I outlined in my article on the meat and dairy industry, reducing the environmental impact of animal agriculture is perhaps the best thing we can do to protect our land and water and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. It will also be a vital step in reducing the probability of a massive food shortage, as eating at a lower trophic level would allow us to grow more calories on less land.
Policies to advance this include produce subsidies and regulating livestock farming practices.
LOCALIZE PRODUCTION
A lot of the movement for more eco-conscious food production is centered around eating organically. But eating locally is just as important, simply because local food tends to be less industrialized and it requires significantly less fossil fuel combustion to transport. Our government can incentivize local food by changing trade policy to promote locally-grown food products.
MITIGATE OVERPOPULATION
The most effective way to reduce your personal carbon footprint isn’t upgrading your lightbulbs, buying an electric car, or installing solar panels on your roof — it’s actually having less children.
We can systemically support reductions in the global birth rate by using our federal budget to invest in education and distribute affordable contraceptives around the world.
The Importance of Nature
After reading this article, I have hopefully convinced you of two things:
CClimate change isn’t just one of many political issues to consider — in the near future, it may easily be the defining force in global politics.
IInvesting in renewable energy may be the most effective thing we can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — but to truly solve climate change, a more holistic solution is required.
But in retrospect, my nine-point argument about the dangers of climate change was woefully incomplete, as it was framed through a solely human perspective.
If you genuinely consider non-human life and biodiversity, the rationale for preventing environmental destruction becomes even more clear. For the moral sake of life on earth — the wealth of plants and animals that make our planet whole — there’s nothing more important that we can be doing than stewarding the environment.
Before, my rationale for solving climate change was solely through an anthropocentric lens. But my mindset changed when I watched two incredible YouTube videos that, for me, made it overwhelmingly obvious that protecting the natural environment that surrounds us should be one of mankind’s biggest considerations.
The first involved a dolphin that had been impaled by a hook. At the bottom of the ocean, the dolphin saw a group of SCUBA divers, figures completely foreign to the animal.
You’d expect the dolphin to actively swim away from the humans, who, for all it knew, were a potential predator. But incredibly, the dolphin had the empathy and theory of mind to swim directly towards the divers, and as they painfully extracted the hook from its body, it had the trust to let them finish their work.
The second video I watched involved a 59 year old chimpanzee that was in the final moments of its life. Despite the immense pain it must have been experiencing, it was able to demonstrate one beautiful last act of love.
When discussing climate change, it is imperative that we think beyond the limited confines of politics and economics. We must also view the issue through the lenses of morals, ethics, and empathy for all forms of life on earth.
With such a mental framework, perhaps we can fully comprehend why combatting climate change may very well be the most important battle of our time.
“When you have to classify the very capacity of the Earth to support life as an ‘externality’, then it is time to rethink your theory.”
-Herman Daly
