Internalizing the Age of Upheaval

Kyle Tisdel
Aug 28, 2017 · 11 min read

Welcome to the Anthropocene — a new geologic era denoting human impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems. In short, our collective footprint on the planet is so substantial that human activity is now the dominant planetary influence, causing permanent changes to our oceans and forests, and the mass extinction of plant and animal species on a scale unseen since the age of the dinosaurs. These anthropogenic effects are myriad, but none are more significant than the human alteration of the atmosphere.

Carbon dioxide concentrations have risen 40 percent over pre-industrial levels — the highest in at least the last 800,000 years — trapping the sun’s energy and causing atmospheric warming 170 times faster than the natural background rate. Our oceans have absorbed 93 percent of this energy — equivalent to the energy released by over 4.5 Hiroshima bombs per second, every second, for the last 40 years. Let that sink in.

The 1 percent of that energy absorbed in the atmosphere (the remaining 6 percent is absorbed by land) has already caused temperatures to rise 1°C above pre-industrial levels. This warming is causing irreparable harm to our planet right now. Oceans are becoming warmer and more acidic. Polar ice sheets are melting. Drought is becoming more severe and lasting longer. Wildfires are growing in concentration and strength. Storms and natural disasters are intensifying and becoming more destructive. The lost GDP from these and other climate related impacts are already costing us $44 trillion a year.

Despite the fossil fuel industries’ deliberate campaign to deceive the public on climate change (more on that later), a recent Yale study shows that 70 percent of the American public believes that global warming is happening — with broad majorities in virtually every county across the U.S. There is almost no a red-state/blue-state divide. Yet when respondents were asked whether global warming would harm them personally, only 40 percent said yes. Essentially, climate change is a problem, but it’s someone else’s problem. That disconnect is fundamental to our plight.

Law is the codification of social values — what we deem so fundamental and important that we, as a people, choose to define as the tenants by which we live. Our declaration of these values are older than we are as a nation, and at times so visionary that we are still collectively striving to live into their full meaning: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

On this spectrum, environmental law is relatively new. Indeed, our bedrock environmental laws were born from recognition and public concern over our anthropogenic influence — that human activity was impacting our health and the environment. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published in 1962, bringing to public awareness the environmental impacts of widespread pesticide use. A nationwide ban on the use of DDT was achieved, but it also inspired an environmental movement that led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. In 1969 the Cuyahoga River was so polluted that it caught on fire. In 1972 the Clean Water Act was passed, setting standards for pollutant concentrations and discharges into our nation’s waters. As a people we determined that these impacts — both seen and unseen — were not to be tolerated. Laws were passed.

The paradox of our legal system is that it is both intentionally slow and deliberate in its evolution, yet subject to rapid transformation when society demands. Legal theories and precedent can take decades to work their way through the courts. But when a tipping point is reached, legal norms can suddenly change.

With climate change we have been seduced into inaction. At its core is a callous self-interest. We tell ourselves that the costs of warming can be deferred to future generations, and we rely on the misbelief that the impacts will only be felt by the less fortunate. We tell ourselves that the price in jobs or income or a modern standard of living is too steep. It is an atmospheric tragedy of the commons, and it is both morally and ecologically corrupt.

The current reality is forbidding. Our world is not only, literally, on fire, but our window to put that fire out is rapidly closing.

The risks of climate change have been closely studied by the fossil fuel industry since the 1950s and were gaining scientific recognition within the White House by 1965 in a report for President Lyndon B. Johnson. Fossil fuel companies, and indeed the U.S. Government, have understood the mechanisms of climate change for over 50 years. The long-term projections made then (and reinforced over the ensuing decades) about the impacts of climate change are now being realized — only far sooner and on a greater scale than previously imagined. Rather than acting on this information, fossil fuel companies undertook a campaign to sow doubt and misinformation. Not only has this campaign preserved trillions in profits for the fossil fuel industry, but has proven so successful that many still doubt the truth right before their eyes.

While two degrees Celsius has long been the accepted target for livable warming, that has changed. Observational data shows that climate extremes are increasing at lower than predicted temperatures, such that the risks previously associated with 4°C are now thought to occur at only 2°C rise. In fact, runaway climate change — where feedback loops in the natural environment trigger worsening climate change regardless of human attempts to slow emissions — are now a risk at even 2°C of warming.

This improved understanding on the relationship between warming and climate impacts has been recognized by the international community and also reflected in the Paris agreement — the first time in history where the nations of our world have come together to take collective action on climate change. Paris sets the goal of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.”

These warming thresholds are where the rubber meets the road.

Notwithstanding the U.S. announcement of its intent to withdraw from the accord, even if every country meets their commitment under Paris, expected warming by the end of the century would still be upwards of 3.5°C. Certainly better than doing nothing — where expected warming is 4.5 to 6°C by century’s end — but still exceedingly far away from a goal of well below 2°C of warming, or what we understand to be a livable planet.

The impacts of this warming will vary by region, but no region is ‘safe.’ Every tenth of a degree matters, as impacts will grow in intensity and frequency as warming increases. We are already witnessing heatwaves at the limit of human survivability. Earlier this year Pakistan recorded its highest temperature ever at over 128°F. Global mean temperatures have surpassed the previous record highs for three years in a row. At 1.5°C these heatwaves will last up to two months of the year; at 2°C they will last up to three months. Freshwater scarcity will increase, and will likely be twice as severe at 2°C than at 1.5°C, while flooding and heavy rains will increase. Yields from staple crops like wheat and corn will decline, leading to or exacerbating famine in regions such as West Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central America. The current rate of warming will further precipitate the collapse of polar ice shelves, with the potential to raise sea levels by several meters and rendering most of the world’s coastal cities — including New York, London, Rio de Janeiro and Shanghai — uninhabitable.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) — the Nobel Prize winning body comprised of hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists — released a “carbon budget” that coincides with the 2°C warming threshold. This budget is essentially a measure of the emissions we have left in our account before we go bankrupt. For a 66 percent chance of limiting warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, our remaining budget from all human-made sources is approximately 800 gigatons of CO2. Of course, a far more stringent budget is required to limit warming to 1.5°C, of which only about 200 gigatons remains. (And for an 80 percent chance to stay under the 2°C threshold, emissions must be limited to just over 300 gigatons, with only about 75 gigatons left for 1.5°C). Globally, we currently emit around 36 gigatons per year. Neither the math, nor the timeline, is encouraging. At current emission rates we will exceed the 1.5°C threshold by 2021, and surpass 2°C by 2036 — and sooner if we want to give ourselves an 80 percent chance.

But when these budgets are applied to the world’s stock of fossil fuel reserves, we can begin to understand just how dire a situation we find ourselves in. The world’s currently operating coal mines and oil and gas wells contain 942 gigatons worth of emissions — more than the entire emissions budget for a 2°C threshold. In addition, fossil fuel companies and state owned assets hold enough fossil fuel reserves to equal almost 3,000 gigatons of emissions. These are the reserves that are already owned and where there is an investment-backed expectation to have them developed. Finally, global estimates of economically recoverable coal, oil and gas reserves — what could be extracted using today’s technologies — contain potential emissions of more than 7,200 gigatons.

In short, the vast majority of fossil fuel reserves cannot be burned. This ‘embedded carbon’ (the fossil fuels that companies and states expect to sell and burn) is enough to take the world beyond 3°C warming. For a shot at staying below the 2°C threshold, about 80 percent of held fossil fuel reserves must remain in the ground. Any notion of additional fossil fuel exploration or leasing is categorically off limits.

The significance of this cannot be overstated. We’re talking about the immediate transformation of the world’s energy and financial systems. Because here’s the thing, our global economy has been built on fossil fuels. Capitalism is premised on ever increasing growth, the basis of which has been the exploitation of the natural world, and in particular our energy resources. This has been accomplished through unsustainable levels of consumer and government debt, which, in turn, assume future growth as a prerequisite to avoid a collapse of the whole system. When growth slows (typically measured by GDP), the entire economy slows into recession; if growth stops, our economic and political systems cease to function.

Globally we spend $950 billion per year on new fossil fuel infrastructure. The capital expenditures required to maintain rates of fossil fuel production are also increasing. In other words, the energy return on investment is shrinking, yet we keep pumping more money into the system. But these investments are not simply paid for out-of-pocket, but are leveraged against company shares and loans from financial institutions. For example, the Dakota Access pipeline is a $3.8 billion project. Two-thirds of the pipeline is financed by loans from 17 different banks, including Wells Fargo and Citibank. Like a mortgage on a house, the repayment of those loans takes place over decades, not years. This means oil needs to flow through the pipeline over the entire term of the loan for the banks to receive a return on their investment. Cutting that period short — which needs to happen across the fossil fuel industry to maintain a path that would avoid catastrophic climate change — means that a significant portion of those investments would be lost, becoming stranded assets. This dynamic serves to lock-in future emissions while also creating inherent financial risk.

This entire system is a giant Ponzi scheme. Capital is borrowed to fund current infrastructure on the promise of future exploitation, leveraged by fossil fuel reserves that simply cannot be burned. Citigroup, in a report to their investors, estimated that “the value of unburnable reserves could amount to over $100 trillion out to 2050.” What happens when that amount of capital simply evaporates? If governments act in a manner consistent with limiting warming to 2°C — let alone thresholds of 1.5°C or even 1°C (which is what science tells us is necessary to sustain a livable planet for future generations) — the foundations upon which our governments have been built risk collapse, all without the added layer of the climate impacts that are already occurring.

Of course, none of these elements exist in a vacuum. Our ecological, energy, financial, and geopolitical systems are all interrelated and reinforcing.

An unrelenting 3-year drought resulting in crop failures and water shortages caused 1.5 million Syrian farmers to seek refuge in the country’s cities. This population influx led to a scarcity of resources, triggering social unrest and ultimately civil war. There are currently 4.8 million Syrian refugees that have fled the conflict, and 13.5 million more within Syria in desperate need of aid. It is conservatively estimated that there will be 500 million climate refugees by 2050. Those people will go to our cities where they will compete for a finite number of jobs, food, water, housing, and other resources; to say nothing of the growing humanitarian crisis that exists for those populations that remain. How will our world manage dislocation on this scale?

None of this is to suggest that we simply throw our hands up. Every ton of carbon that we can keep in the ground, and every tenth of a degree of warming we can avoid, is vitally important. The campaigns, people, and organizations undertaking this work vitally need support.

Equally critical, however, is that we actually internalize what this information is telling us. Our collective assumptions about what the future will look like need to adjust. Our world will be warmer, perhaps much warmer, than it is today — causing cascading effects throughout the biosphere. Our financial systems, and the global economy that has been built on the abundance and exploitation of our natural resources will, at the very least, undergo a significant correction. And our relationship to one another, our political institutions, and indeed the very fabric of society will be stretched to a breaking point.

The global community’s response to these threats must be on a scale almost beyond our imaginations. Quite literally, it calls for the complete transformation of our energy, transportation, financial, food, and political institutions — simultaneously — over the ensuing decades. It is not hyperbolic to suggest that the long-term survival of our species is on the line.

Our collective call to action is to build resilience in these systems, now. Landscapes should be managed and restored to sustain critical forests and wetlands, species diversity, and as sinks for carbon sequestration. In communities we need to protect our water sources, intensify local food production and adopt restoration agricultural practices. We need to bolster vulnerable infrastructure and develop local, distributed generation of renewable energy. And we need to cultivate and foster our civic institutions. We should embrace resilience within our families and build networks to those around us. This is where hope lies.

But as individuals, we must come to terms with our reality. We are not served by denial or by despair. Although we should rightfully be outraged and alarmed, we must each find a pathway through those emotions that lead to action.

We must also come to terms with our arrival at this moment. Our cultural predisposition toward the exploitation of people and the natural world is not new — we have just gotten better and more efficient at it over time. Through subjugation, globalization, and the technological and communications revolution, this mentality now predominates globally. As Albert Einstein once said, “no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” We must challenge ourselves to think outside this paradigm, and resist the temptation to believe that market forces will cure these problems; that we can conquer the global degradation of spirit through further innovation. We find ourselves in a period of ultimate transition — how we bridge this moment to whatever is next. The invitation is a deeper exploration of our relationship to the earth, each other, and within ourselves.

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Kyle Tisdel
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