By the time you read this, you may have voted. However the election turns out, the world’s climate will continue to be a dire problem in need of a solution.
We all know that the climate is warming. Some folks will die of heat, some from fiercer-than-ever storms. Changing seasons are making farming tricky, and sea level is rising. All are a problem for humanity and life on this planet.
Fossil fuels are the residue of life on Earth buried hundreds of millions of years ago. We get continually better at finding and extracting it in the form of coal, oil and “natural” gas, which we use to power the things we depend on (transportation, heating, electric generation, farming and plastics). That’s the “American way of life.” We live it.
Unfortunately, the burning of fossil carbon produces carbon dioxide (CO2) as a byproduct. It floats almost unseen to thicken an atmospheric blanket around our planet. The invisible blanket’s nickname, “the greenhouse effect,” tells it like it is – the air is warmer inside than outside.
About 90% of the extra heat that the greenhouse effect causes goes to warm the oceans. It’s made dipping into the water off the coast of Florida this summer like “entering a hot tub.” However, warmer shallow waters also provide just the right conditions for the development of bigger hurricanes. New England’s winter storms develop from warmer surface waters in the mid-Atlantic. Remember the ones that damaged our forests and shores last winter?
Earth’s oceans also suffer in two other ways. About 30% of the extra CO2 from burning ends up in ocean waters, making them acidic – a problem for anything with a shell. Second, phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain, require both sunshine and nutrients. Unfortunately, warmer oceans stratify. The nutrients remain in the cooler waters below. Huge areas of the oceans are dying.
If humanity, especially in the developed part of the world, is the cause of the problem, we must get going on solutions. But what are they?
The first, identified decades ago, is to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels. Instead, humanity has been revving up the accelerator on emissions and thus climate change. Reductions can come from actions taken by you and me and businesses we patronize. We are fortunate in Maine, with the support that Efficiency Maine offers, that our emissions have been reduced somewhat. More needs to be done, across the U.S. and worldwide.
The second solution is a bundle of different actions under the growing toolbox of “greenhouse gas removal.” Many involve natural processes, like planting more trees, reducing deforestation and growing seaweeds. Fertilizing parts of the ocean with iron and other nutrients to encourage the growth of phytoplankton should drop some organic carbon to the ocean floor. Others may surprise you, like making cement without burning quarried limestone. Also, adding synthetic limestone to the concrete mix. Several U.S. companies are already involved.
While the private sector has made some progress, to truly scale these ideas will require congressional actions, and worldwide action on land and in the oceans if we are ever to restore the climate to the conditions our great-grandparents knew. Otherwise, the changing climate we’re experiencing now is our legacy to our grandchildren and all others, like it or not.
So, make changes in your lifestyle to reduce your own emissions. And, whether or not you voted for your senators and representative, please write to them expressing your concern. The Senate already has several useful bills in process, including the Carbon Removal and Emissions Storage Technologies Act of 2023 (the CREST Act), and the Federal Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act of 2024. Both came out of the bipartisan Senate Climate Solutions Caucus. Let’s get Congress and the White House to take up urgent action on climate in 2025.
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