An Inconvenient Turn of Events
With President Trump’s motion to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and the widespread destruction caused by the 2017 Atlantic Hurricane Season, things look glum for the climate movement. However, as former Vice President Al Gore’s latest documentary shows, we can work around the President, but we need to work harder than ever to reduce the impacts of global warming.
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The past 12 months have been a low point for the climate change movement. The election of famous climate sceptic and fossil-fuels advocate Donald Trump as President of the United States arguably being the catalyst. But there’s still time: Al Gore’s follow up documentary ‘An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power’ shows that despite obstacles, we are edging towards an energy revolution and not a moment too soon.
We are currently in the midst of a record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season. Hurricane Harvey, the first major Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in the United States in 12 years (and the wettest on record) caused widespread destruction in Texas. Hurricane Harvey and the violent floods which followed suit have left 30,000 people displaced and resulted in 63 fatalities. Hurricane Irma, the strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded, is on an even more damaging path through the Caribbean as it makes its way to Southern Florida. Such extremes are becoming the norm. Higher sea surface temperatures and weak prevailing winds have resulted in the stronger, more slow-moving hurricanes and the third ‘500-year flood’ in just three years.
Despite these acute conditions, conservative groups are quick to shrug off the link between the hurricane season and climate change. Instead, sceptics have made an attempt to obfuscate the links and demonise climate activists by claiming them to be taking advantage of such horrendous conditions. Rush Limbaugh, a Conservative radio host, even claimed that hurricanes acted as conspiracies for climate scientists, before evacuating Florida himself. The truth of the matter is however, that 14 of the 15 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000, with 93% of the extra heat being trapped in the oceans contributing to warmer sea surface temperatures which is linked to the generation and strength of hurricanes. Patterns show that global warming is contributing to an increased incidence of extreme weather, regardless of what climate sceptics may argue.
Since his inauguration, Trump has moved to gut President Obama’s climate change policies, most recently announcing his intentions to pull out of the Paris Agreement signed just two years ago. However, President Trump’s movements come in an era where the consensus on human-induced climate change is virtually unanimous, even Secretary for State and former CEO of ExxonMobil Rex Tillerson was an advocate of remaining in the Paris Agreement. It was feared that the US’s decision to pull out would trigger a domino effect, especially when countries such as India were so hesitant about joining the agreement. Instead, world leaders have redoubled their commitments to the agreement in solidarity and climate scientists breathed a sigh of relief.
We have the solutions. Since the release of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ in 2006, the price of renewable energy has decreased massively, especially for solar panels which has fallen 10% a year. Once you’re saving money, it is much easier to acknowledge the benefits of clean, renewable energy and invest in to other methods of mitigating the impacts of climate change.
Even in conservative areas across America, communities have embraced the renewables movements. For example, Georgetown, Texas, whose mayor describes the settlement as ‘the reddest town, in the reddest county’, the community has moved to abandon fossil fuels due to the potential of solar energy. Across the globe there are many grassroots examples of regions moving to 100% renewable energy. Closer to home, the island of Samsø in Denmark for example which holds a negative carbon footprint relying on a combination of windmills, biomass district heating plants and improvements on transportation and energy conservation, exporting spare energy to the mainland. This combined with the top-down enforcement of the Paris agreement means we are closer than it may feel at present to revolutionising the energy industry.
This does not mean that the rest of the movement to a green energy industry is going to be easy — the hard work has only just begun. But we can work around Trump, as long as governments hold their commitments to the Paris agreement and the price of renewables continues to fall. To echo Gore in the finale of ‘An Inconvenient Sequel’, we must continue to fight like our world depends on it, because it does.
