Our generation’s greatest challenge
When I was in 6th grade, my science teacher told us to give a presentation on a topic of our choice. I had just watched Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and considered myself an expert on climate change, so I did my presentation on global warming. After I gave my presentation and returned to my seat, the cute girl who sat next to me leaned over and whispered, “That was great.” That was enough to hook my future in clean energy.
But you probably aren’t as simple-minded as me. So let me try to do for you what that cute girl in 6th grade did for me, but using facts.
According to the World Health Organization, between 2030 and 2050, climate change will kill about 250,000 people every year. This is from:
- 38,000 due to heat exposure. Remember that a 2003 European heat wave caused 70,000 deaths.
- 48,000 due to diarrhea, caused by flooded freshwater supplies. Water-borne diseases currently cause 760,000 deaths every year.
- 60,000 due to malaria, caused by the spread of disease-carrying insects. Currently, malaria causes almost 600,000 deaths every year.
- 95,000 due to malnutrition. Rising temperatures decrease the production of staple foods in many of the poorest regions. Malnutrition currently cause 3.1M deaths every year.
…but these numbers are conservative estimates, since they project that these deaths will shrink from our current numbers due to economic growth. They don’t even include the numbers from weather-related disasters, which currently result in over 60,000 deaths every year.
There will also be massive economic impacts. MIT research estimates that air pollution alone currently costs China $100B annually. Marshall Burke, a Stanford economist, says that due to the correlation between temperature and GDP, global GDP will fall by about 23% by 2100 with current climate trends. And let’s not forget that more than half of the world lives within 60 km of the sea, so everyone will have to move or learn to cohabit with fish.
But we all know this right? Aoi, why are you even writing this? Around 70% of Americans agree that climate change is real.
Here’s the crux of the issue — many people still don’t care, and most people who do care, don’t actually care.
Anthony Leiserowitz, a Yale researcher, asked 1200 registered voters to rank 23 issues by importance. Among Democrats, protecting the environment, climate change, and clean energy ranked near the top of the list. Among Republicans, these issues were at the very bottom of the list, with climate change falling to dead last. This actually makes environmental sustainability the most polarized issue in America.
With such a contentious topic, one would expect the environment to take centerstage during a political campaign. And yet, moderators didn’t ask a single question on climate change during the presidential or vice presidential debates. The only time climate change came up was when Clinton brought it up to address America’s energy situation. This is even harder to swallow when you consider that the 2nd debate happened the day after Hurricane Matthew killed 49 Americans, 1600 total. In hindsight though, maybe this was predictable. Few people ever vote for the environment — according to Jon Krosnick of Stanford, only about 13% of the electorate are guided by the environmental policies of their candidate. This isn’t an anomaly with the most recent election season — it’s a systemic trend.
According to a 2016 Gallup poll, while the percentage of Americans who worry about global warming is up to 64% (compared to 55% from a year ago), the percentage of Americans who see global warming as a serious threat is still stuck at 41%.
And when voters were asked for the most important problem facing the country today, climate change registered at the very bottom. But when voters were asked for the most serious problem facing the country in the future, global warming rose to the top.
It’s because we have procrastination ingrained in our human DNA. Despite the science surrounding our frightening future, we’re unable to seriously consider the gravity of the facts because the future seems so far away.
The 1965 President’s Advisory Committee panel warned that the greenhouse effect is a matter of “real concern,” and the 1995 IPCC Second Assessment Report concluded that humans are definitively responsible for climate change. This clearly isn’t a new issue. But historically, every generation has been putting this issue off for the next generation to solve. The Paris Climate Agreement is a step in the right direction, but the IEA states that this is “not nearly enough to limit warming to less than 2 [degrees C].”
Political experts would argue that climate change will weigh more heavily on voters’ minds as climate change has a more direct impact on the electorate. The problem with this is that this necessitates that we must wait for global catastrophe before effective change can happen.
If we want to avoid total irreversible armageddon, the only alternative is to make renewables and other advanced energy sectors larger and more competitive, so that it becomes an easy economic decision. Solar and wind are growing fast (in fact, the number of US jobs in solar overtook those in natural gas and oil combined in 2015), but this will become an all-out fight against some of the richest and most powerful people in the world. To win, we need more kids studying clean energy technologies. We need more smart and passionate people entering the sustainability industry. We need people to act now, and not leave it for their grandchildren.
Our generation has many challenges. But I challenge you to find an issue that is more artificially polarized with billions of dollars from lobbyists, will kill millions of people and tangibly affect the rest of the world, and yet continues to be consistently neglected on the national stage. I challenge you to find a more meaningful, more challenging, sector, than the clean energy sector.
It’s up to us. And if people in power in our country won’t pay attention, it’s up to you and it’s up to me.
Don’t let our earth get destroyed. We only have one of it. It’s up to us.
Share this with a friend choosing a major, looking for a first job, or thinking of switching careers. Heck, read this out loud to your infant child.
Check out this report for details on climate change. Check this or this out to learn more about greenhouse gases. If you’d like to contribute right away, consider volunteering for this, or donating to this or this. I’ve also answered a lot of questions on clean tech on Quora.
Let’s get to work!
